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GREECE AND THE GREEKS 



GREECE 
AND THE GREEKS 

BY 

Z. DUCKETT FERR1MAN 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 
JAMES POTT & CO. 



II kilt 

I // 



Copyright in the British Empire of Mills Boon, Ltd., London 
Printed by William Brendon &" Son, Ltd., Plymouth, England 



PREFACE 



HE Author takes this opportunity to acknow- 



-■- ledge the kind courtesy of the Director of 
the British School at Athens, who allowed him 
to use the school library during his stay. For 
much information concerning Folk-lore he is in- 
debted to Sir Rennell Rodd's Customs and Lore of 
Modern Greece, to Dr. Bernhard Schmidt's Das 
Volksleben der Neugriechen, and indirectly to the 
sidelights thrown on the subject by the collec- 
tions of Greek Folk-songs of Fauriel, Passow, 
and G. F. Abbott. The account of Naxos and 
Santorin was written before he had seen Mr. W. 
Miller's Latins of the Levant, otherwise he would 
have been able to make a better use of his oppor- 
tunities. That work, the outcome of laborious 
research in a rather obscure but fascinating field, 
has revealed much that he longed to know on a 
subject that has had a special attraction for him 
since his first visit to the Cyclades many years 
ago. 




Z. D. F. 



MlNETY, MALMESBURY, 

July 17th, 1910. 



f 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Greek Mainland i 

II. The Isles 55 

III. Types and Traits 132 

IV. Domestic Life 165 

V. The Greek People . . . .197 

VI. Faith and Folk-lore . . . .211 

VII. Education 251 

VIII. Public Life 263 

IX, Literature and Journalism . . . 2S0 

X. Athens 290 



HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



CHAPTER I 
THE GREEK MAINLAND 
ERE an aeroplanist to take an eagle flight 



V V over Greece, the features that would strike 
him most would be the great preponderance of 
mountain compared with level ground, and the 
enormous coast-line. The sea reaches into the 
heart of the land from east and west and south, 
and the great fiord, the Gulf of Corinth, nearly 
cuts it in two, making the Peloponnesus all but 
an island, so that a country with an area rather 
smaller than that of Scotland has a coast-line far 
longer than that of England. 1 The northern half 
of Greece is bisected by Pindus, an irregular 
chain throwing off ranges right and left, so that 
from any lofty point of view the prospect is a con- 
fused jumble of mountains and deep blue inlets — 
a mingling of Switzerland and Norway. The 
plains are few — alluvial strips on portions of the 

1 Greece has seven times as much coast as England in propor- 
tion to its area, and nearly twelve times as much as France. 




E 



2 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



coast, alluvial patches round the heads of gulfs, 
at the mouths of rivers. The broad basin of 
Thessaly and the Boeotian level are the most con- 
siderable in Northern Greece; and in the Pelo- 
ponnesus, which is for the most part a mountain 
mass with the elevated hollow of Arcadia in its 
centre, the undulating plain of Elis opening on 
the west, the plain of Argos, the valley of Sparta, 
and the rich lowlands of Messenia on the south, 
with the narrow strip on the Achaian shore. All 
these fertile regions are cut off from the rest of 
the land by mountain barriers, but all, except 
Arcadia, are easy of access from the sea. Hence 
it is that in a country where communication by 
land is difficult and slow, there is considerable 
coasting traffic and a large maritime population. 
More than half the land is unproductive moun- 
tain, and only 21 per cent under cultivation, so 
pastoral pursuits largely claim the attention of 
the rural folk. The man who builds boats and 
the man who sails them, and the man who rears 
and tends flocks and herds are important factors 
in Greece. Nevertheless the husbandmen far out- 
number the shepherds owing to the more exacting 
nature of the work — 40 per cent of the nation 
is agricultural, and 10 per cent pastoral. Only 
8 per cent of the land is pasture in the strict sense 
of the word, though this does not include the 
domain of the nomad Vlachs who wander with 
their flocks on the mountains. More than half 
of the agricultural population is of Albanian 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 3 



origin. 1 This people forms the backbone of rural 
Greece, for your true Greek will not till the land 
if he can earn a living in any other way. He is 
instinctively a townsman and a trader. The 
Albanian is a farmer, and considering that 70 per 
cent of the exports of Greece consists of land 
produce, it must be allowed that he is a very 
valuable asset to the kingdom. 

By far the largest grain -growing district in 
Greece is the Thessalian plain, which was a lake 
until the defile of Tempe was cloven between 
Ossa and Olympus by a seismic cataclysm which 
let the water out. The ancient myth attributed 
the cleft to the trident of Neptune, but it was 
Vulcan who accomplished the task. Geologists 
say that it occurred at no distant period, if 
reckoned in terms of geologic time ; but in any 
case the plain is a lake bottom of exuberant 

1 The Albanian population of Greece is completely Hellenised. 
It is of Toskh origin. The Toskhs are the Southern Albanians, 
whose northern limit may be assigned to the neighbourhood of 
the River Skumbi. They differ materially from the Ghegs or 
Northern Albanians. The latter are divided into tribes, the 
Toskhs are not. When the Gheg is a Christian, he is a Roman 
Catholic, whilst the Toskh is Orthodox. Greek influence has 
moulded the Toskhs for centuries, and a Toskh, even in Turkish 
territory, resembles a Greek more than he does his Gheg com- 
patriot, whose chief occupation is fighting. When not thus 
engaged his condition is that of armed idleness. The difference 
extends even to the dress ; the Albanian costume adopted by the 
Greeks, whose distinguishing feature is the fustanella^ the many- 
pleated white kilt, is Toskh. The fustanella is unknown among 
the Ghegs. It is difficult to draw a line of demarcation between 
Greeks and Toskhs in North-Western Greece. But the division 
between Toskhs and Ghegs farther north is as sharp as 
between two different nations. 



4 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



fertility, yielding heavy crops of wheat, barley, 
and maize, a treeless dull expanse whose mono- 
tony is accentuated by the distant prospect of 
the glittering peaks of Olympus. It might be 
made to yield a hundredfold more than it does 
at present. Much of it is left fallow, and the 
cultivated portion is tilled by antiquated and 
wasteful methods. The Thessalian peasant is the 
most backward of the Greek agricultural class, 
and he lives under the most unfavourable con- 
ditions. The land consists of large estates, and 
the owners are absentees. Some of them are 
Turks who live at Constantinople, and some are 
Greeks who live at Athens or elsewhere, but 
never on their property. It is one of the peculiar 
features of Greek life that there are no country 
gentlemen. The life, which we in England prize, 
has no charms for them. People who possess 
estates in the midst of 5 the most lovely surround- 
ings tell you that they could not endure to remain 
a week on them. They care nothing for sport, as 
a rule, and appear to be insensible to the joy of 
that intimate contact with nature which is the best 
part of the life of so many of us. They prefer the 
asphalt, the gossip of the cafe and the club, and 
when they quit Athens in the baking days of 
summer, they go to their country-houses at 
Kephisia or at Poros, where other people have 
country-houses. The Greek is essentially gre- 
garious. Even the tillers of the soil crowd to- 
gether in big villages, often far from the scene 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 5 



of their labours ; you do not find the solitary 
homestead. But this is largely due to want of 
security. In the Peloponnesus, where brigandage 
has not been heard of since 1847, and where a 
peaceful population dwells in full assurance of 
immunity from attack, one does come across 
isolated households, not infrequently. The urban 
proclivities of Greek landed proprietors have re- 
sulted in the division of estates into small hold- 
ings. But this is not yet the case in Thessaly, 
though the Government is alive to the need of it, 
and is considering schemes of expropriation, and 
the creation of homesteads with plots for the 
cultivation of vegetables and fruit. Both are 
almost unknown at present, to the prejudice of 
the public health. (Thessaly can never become 
so pleasant a habitat as Southern Greece, owing 
to climatic conditions. The summers are parching 
and rainless, and there is a scarcity of water. 
The winters are severe. The tempering influence 
of the sea breeze is shut out by the girdle of 
mountains surrounding the plain. Malarial fever 
is prevalent, and its effects are seen in the sallow 
complexions, hollow cheeks, and listless move- 
ments of the people, whose poor and monotonous 
dietary does not afford them sufficient vitality to 
combat the scourge. * Political and economic con- 
ditions, moreover, have contributed to sap their 
energy. Spoliation , and insecurity have been 
their lot for centuries. They were under Turkish 
rule until 1881, ground between the upper and 



6 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



nether millstones of Turkish Agha and Chris- 
tian Klepht. The latter descended from the 
mountains and helped himself to what the former 
had left. The frontier is still the haunt of out- 
laws, and notoriously the most insecure region 
in the kingdom. It is not surprising, therefore, 
that a certain air of savagery lingers on the 
Thessalian plain, nor that the discontent of the 
population bursts out into occasional acts of 
violence. The interest of ownership is the most 
obvious remedy, and the peasant is sensible of 
this. He contrasts his position with that of his 
more fortunate compatriot in other portions of the 
kingdom, although he is incapable of compre- 
hending the difference in the physical conditions 
which would make the small holding a failure in 
Thessaly, whilst it is a success in the Morea. 
Scientific agriculture and the use of perfected 
machinery are needed in Thessaly in order to 
develop its potentialities. At present the region 
which ought to be the greatest source of wealth 
in Greece is the most melancholy in aspect of any, 
whilst its people live under the hardest conditions. 
The tiller of the soil should at least be allowed 
to lead a more human existence, and this could 
be accomplished by providing him with a plot on 
which he could raise garden produce, and a 
dwelling better fitted for habitation than his mud 
hovel. Above all, he should have this on a secure 
tenure. 

Differing entirely from the rest of Thessaly, the 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 7 



Magnesian peninsula is a wooded spur of Pelion, 
the seaward rampart of the Gulf of Volo, which 
by an inward curve it turns almost into a lake. 
Volo is a clean, cheerful, modern town with very 
ancient associations, for hard by is the site of 
Iolcos where the Argo was built, her timbers 
coming from the mountain-side, still clothed with 
oak and fir. A railway leads from Volo to 
Milceas, past villages embowered in orchards of 
apple, pear, quince, and apricot. Milceas itself is 
set in the midst of plantations of mulberry trees, 
for silk is the staple product. It is a place of 
bounding rills and springs bubbling from fern- 
tapestried rocks, of marvellous vignettes of sea 
and mount, seen through over-arching foliage, of 
gay gardens roofed with trellised vines — the finest 
clusters I ever saw were at Milceas. It has troops 
of rosy-cheeked, sturdy children, well clad and well 
mannered. Farther west it would become a 
i i beauty spot" and a health resort, with big 
hotels and a Kursaal and a funicular to the top 
of Pelion ; but its remoteness has saved it from 
this, and under the giant plane trees by the 
public fountain the elders inhale the fragrant tum- 
baki in peace. 

The deltaic wedge at the mouth of the Sper- 
cheios, with Lamia as its centre, separated from 
the Thessalian plain by the chain of Othrys, is 
one of the regions in which tobacco is grown, 
and it contains good cattle pastures. South of 
it, and cut off by the lofty range of GEta, is 



8 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



the Livadian country and Lake Copais, once a 
hotbed of fever which carried off three out of every 
four children born in the district. Since Copais 
has been drained, thanks to English enterprise, 
the area has become one of the most productive 
in the country. Cotton and maize are the staple 
crops of Livadia. The golden heaps of grain and 
the paler heaps of husks used for stuffing mat- 
tresses are conspicuous at harvest time. When 
the cotton is being gathered the pyramidal 
mounds look like the white tents of a military 
camp, and the brightly garbed women and chil- 
dren moving between the rows of plants as they 
pluck the cotton from the pods and drop it into 
linen bags suspended from their necks, make a 
pretty picture. 

A low range of hills divides this from the Boeo- 
tian plain, a fat land with a mixed population in 
which the Albanian element is prominent — a land 
of laborious peasants, much richer than the 
starved soil of Attica, though the inhabitants 
of Athens look down on the Boeotians. Their 
predecessors in the classical age likewise affected 
to despise the country of Hesiod and Pindar, 
Plutarch and Epaminondas. 

Attica owes its importance to Athens and the 
Piraeus. The commerce and industry of the latter 
make it the busiest centre in the kingdom. The 
tall chimneys of its factories recall the aspect of 
our manufacturing towns, as the blast furnaces of 
Lavrion on the east coast of the Attic peninsula 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 9 



remind us of the Black Country. 1 The capital 
with its port and the lead mines form the chief 
economic assets of Attica, which is agriculturally 
insignificant. The ungrateful soil supports only 
a sparse population almost wholly Albanian. 

There is a point in Central Greece where its 
spine, the steep chain of Pindus, sinks to a low 
pass. But immediately south of it there is a 
sudden rise, and a mountain knot sends forth 
ranges east and west and south, CEta to the Boeo- 
tian shores, the tangle of intersecting ridges in 
CEtolia, and the lofty summits Corax, Parnassus, 
Helicon, Cithasron, which stand as sentinels over 
the Corinthian Gulf. South-eastward through 
lower Attica extend lower ranges to its extreme 
point, " Sunium's marbled steep." The system 
does not end with the mainland, but reappears in 
the ^Egean isles, Zea, Kythnos, Seriphos, Siph- 
nos, which are but the tops of submerged 
mountains of the same formation. This region, 
unproductive, thinly peopled by wandering shep- 
herds and rare villages of hardy mountaineers, is 
as rich in natural beauty as in the myth of the 
world's youth. Cithasron is still gloomy and 
savage, as it was to the poets of old. Helicon, at 

1 The Lavrion mines were probably discovered and worked by 
the Phoenicians. It is almost sure that they furnished a revenue 
to JEg'ma, before they became the property of the Athenians. 
They are mentioned by ^Eschylus and Xenophon. The present com- 
pany exploits the refuse thrown away by the miners of antiquity. 
It was imperfectly smelted, and yields a good percentage of lead 
and a certain quantity of silver. The supply seems inexhaustible, 
and gives an idea of the magnitude of the ancient workings. 



10 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



whose foot Hesiod tilled his farm, still laughs 
with innumerable rills. Parnassus in his mantle 
of snow rises in austere grandeur above Delphi 
and the rent whence issues the Castalian spring. 
The track from Livadia to Delphi by the village 
of Arachova takes the traveller through scenery 
of a stupendous character. At one point he has a 
glimpse of the sea on either hand, mere strips like 
tarns, buried deep in crumpled mountains. If he 
cared to climb the 8070 feet of Parnassus — he can 
do most of it on a mule — Greece lies like a map 
beneath him. East and west is an expanse of 
ocean — the JEgean on one hand, the Ionian Sea 
on the other — his vision extends north to the 
snows of Olympus, south to those of Taygetus, 
and ranges over all that lies between. 

Greece, west of Parnassus and Pindus, presents 
a singular contrast to Greece east of the central 
range. The western half is a wilderness of crests, 
a land of glen and torrent and forest, a clime of 
rainy skies, of mist, of vague pearly lights and 
rolling clouds — a landscape that Salvator Rosa 
would have loved — black Acheron 1 and the 
gnarled and twisted oaks of Dodona. Far 
otherwise is Eastern Greece. There the key- 
note is one of serene beauty. The contour of 
the naked mountains is so harmonious that they 

1 Dodona and Acheron are beyond the political frontier, but 
they are physically a part of Greece. The water of Acheron 
is not black. Like that of the Acheloiis, it is opaque and light 
coloured. But the gorge through which it flows is intensely 
gloomy. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 11 



are always noble in form when not imposing in 
size. There is a happy accord of line and colour 
which brings with it a sense of contentment like 
that inspired by the simple perfection of a Doric 
temple. There is no awe in it, but there is intense 
gladness — the gladness of a limpid atmosphere, of 
brilliant colour, ever changing with the changing 
light — hues of sapphire, of amethyst, of ruby, or 
of molten gold. But it is idle to attempt to trans- 
late those infinite gradations into the coarser tints 
of gem or metal, as it would be to try to reproduce 
them through the medium of any pigment yet de- 
vised by the art of man. There is no foreground 
in Attic and JEgean scenery. The elements of 
rock and water that compose it are rudimentary in 
their simplicity. There are no details to distract 
the eye. We gaze afar at the divine loveliness of 
land and sea and feel that it is good to have been 
born. Such an aspect of nature has some analogy 
with Greek art at its best, and it may be that such 
an environment inspired it. 

The contrast is not one of physical features 
alone. The Greece that gave to Europe the first 
notions of letters, art, science, and politics — 
Greece in her glory — was Eastern Greece. The 
Greece that matters to us finished at Delphi. 
The rude peoples of Acarnania, CEtolia, and 
Epirus remained strangers to Hellenic influences. 
And when at a later stage of history they emerged 
from obscurity, it was in arms, not in arts, that 
they shone, from the days of Pyrrhus onwards, 



12 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



with intervals of darkness, illumined in our own 
times by the heroism and the tragedy of Parga, of 
Suli, of Mesolonghi. 

The physical structure of Western Greece for- 
bids social and economic development. The high 
relief, mountains holding no soil, a coast falling 
steep to the sea, harbourless, affording no foot- 
hold for man save in one or two malarious 
patches, and the swampy character of the valleys 
impose on the country a thin population. In the 
hollow that holds the lakes of Agrinion are grown 
fruit and tobacco — the latter of the finest quality 
and the most important product in that region. 
In the lagoons round Mesolonghi the rice-fields 
afford employment to one section of the inhabi- 
tants and the fishery to another. The fish of the 
Gulf of Lepanto are larger and of better quality 
than those of Pirseus, and a speciality of Meso- 
longhi is botargOy a preparation of fish-roe and a 
high-priced luxury. These are the only two cen- 
tres of any account. Turning to Eastern Greece, 
we find the fertile plains of Thessaly, Lamia, and 
Bceotia, the mines of Lavrion and Euboea, the 
latter practically a part of the mainland. A swing- 
bridge spans the narrow Euripos, with its alter- 
nating current, which so sorely puzzled Aristotle 
and still awaits a satisfactory explanation. After 
crossing it we scarcely realise that we have left 
the continent or that these land-locked tranquil 
waters are a part of the sea. They afford a secure 
anchorage for many a mile, and taken together 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 13 



with the spacious harbours of Piraeus, the round 
lake-like Gulf of Volo, and the narrow channel 
between the mainland and Salamis, offer a series 
of havens perhaps unequalled anywhere within 
so small an area. Busy Piraeus with its varied 
industries is the point of contact with the outside 
world. It is in almost daily communication with 
Western Europe and with Constantinople and the 
Black Sea by means of mail-steamers under divers 
flags, and twice or thrice a week with Egypt. Its 
own steamers serve the islands and the Asiatic 
ports, and two lines, one Greek, the other 
Austrian, keep it in constant touch with America. 
Four miles inland is Athens, the seat of govern- 
ment, and a great centre of education for Greeks 
from all lands. Here, on this eastern side of the 
kingdom, are concentrated its activities, political, 
commercial, social, and intellectual. Greece, as 
of old, has her face to Asia and her back to 
Europe. 

There are only two ways of reaching Greece. 
One is by Piraeus, which is disappointing, for 
the traveller arrives in the midst of the din and 
dust of a somewhat sordid seaport and makes his 
way to Athens by a dull road, punctuated by 
factory chimneys, through a shabby suburb. The 
other is from Brindisi to Corfu and Patras, 
whence he steams between the castles of Rhion 
and Anti-Rhion from the Gulf of Lepanto to the 
Gulf of Corinth, through the heart of Greece, 
between ramparts of crests and peaks, whose 



14 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



memory will remain with him throughout his life. 
That magnificent array of mountains would excite 
emotion by its grandeur, but every summit is 
fraught with legends of gods and men. A closer in- 
spection, however, will reveal a marked difference 
between the two sides of the gulf. The northern 
coast is one of stern solitude. Beetling crags fall 
sheer to the water. For mile after mile there is 
not a sign of habitation. Then, at rare intervals, 
there comes a hamlet. Galaxidi, a tiny town on 
a low cliff, lives entirely on the sea, peopled by 
mariners and those who minister to them, the 
builders of ships and the makers of masts and 
rigging. Within an inlet is a narrow strip of 
cultivated plain, on which stands Itea, backed by 
the ravine of Delphi and the snows of Parnassus. 
But it is a coast which repels rather than invites. 
Men who live on it are thrust out to sea for their 
livelihood by the sterile spurs which strike their 
roots deep beneath the waters. Turn to the 
opposite shore, where the stone pines on the low 
red cliffs almost dip into the waves. Villages, as 
far as the eye can reach, gleam on the champaign. 
For this is the littoral of Achaia, the most densely 
peopled district in Greece, the home of the currant 
vine, where land costs twelve times as much as 
elsewhere. It is the northern fringe of the Pelo- 
ponnesus, a region separated from the rest of the 
kingdom in other ways than by the breadth of 
the gulf. Almost an island — the Corinthian 
isthmus is barely three miles wide — the Pelo- 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 15 



ponnesus is deeply indented by spacious inlets. 
Thus open to the tempering influence of the sea, 
it escapes the baking summers and harsh winters 
of Northern Greece. When Thessaly is swelter- 
ing under a pitiless sun, the Peloponnesus is 
comparatively cool. When Thessaly is draped 
with snow, the oranges are ripening in Sparta 
and Messenia. If we climb to the top of the lofty 
barrier which rises behind the low coast strip, we 
behold a country that looks little else than a 
mountain mass. Fan-like, ranges run south-east- 
ward through Argolis and Laconia to the stormy 
Cape Malea, south and west through Elis and 
Messenia to Cape Gallo, and due south, the 
central chain, the longest and loftiest, rises into 
the sharp snowy needles of Taygetus, and sinks 
into the Mediterranean at rugged Matapan. 
There are lateral ramifications, so that the land 
looks like a billowy sea of crest and ridge and 
peak which gives little promise of fertility. But 
the valleys between are hidden from us ; the plain 
of Argos, the rolling expanse of Elis, the broad 
green vale of Sparta east of Taygetus, and the 
rich Messenian level west of it. The garden of 
Greece this last, for it is open to the winds from 
Africa and sheltered from the north by mountains. 
In the heart of the land is a hollow, itself from 
two thousand to three thousand feet above sea- 
level, in part an undulating plain, in part wooded 
valleys. This is Arcadia, where the winters are 
cold and the summers cool and rainy, a region of 



16 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



pasture and grain. The summer showers of the 
Peloponnesus are a feature which make it distinct 
from the generally rainless summers of Northern 
Greece. The mountains are high enough to catch 
and condense the watery vapours from the sea, 
and also to hold their snows until the dog days, 
when they descend to the valleys as fertilising 
streams. Thus there is no dry fallow time as in 
the north. With such physical environment the 
produce of the soil is naturally more varied than 
in the rest of Greece. The fastidious currant vine 
thrives only in the Peloponnesus and the neigh- 
bouring island of Zante. The 3700 acres of Greek 
soil devoted to the cultivation of the orange are 
likewise in the Peloponnesus. The connoisseur 
of the orange may like to know that the Messenian 
fruit is noted for its luscious and juicy qualities, 
whilst that of Sparta claims priority for its 
fragrance and delicious flavour. There are 490 
square miles of vineyards in Greece, a large pro- 
portion of which are in the islands and the Pelo- 
ponnesus, but the finest vines the country grows 
are indisputably those of Achaia, where alone the 
viticulturists .have succeeded in producing a 
champagne. 1 Greece is pre-eminently the habitat 
of the olive. The groves cover an area of 675 
square miles, much of which is on islands, but 
the greater portion in the Peloponnesus. The 
olives of the Messenian plain known as Kalamata 

1 Since writing- the above I am informed that Tripolitza also 
produces a sparkling wine. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 17 

olives are incomparably superior to any others. | 
They are easily distinguished by their slender 
pointed shape and rich brown-purple hue. There 
is said to be a secret in their preparation, but the 
fruit itself is no doubt the essence of the secret. 
They command a good price as a table delicacy, 
and indeed there are no others in the world to 
equal them, so far as the experience of the writer 
goes. The taste for olives, like that for caviare, 
is said to be an acquired one, and in so far as 
concerns the green Spanish variety, known in 
England as Aceitunas de la Reina, the statement 
is admissible ; but that harsh and acrid product 
bears no relation to the delicate texture and suave 
yet piquant flavour of the fruit of Kalamata. The 
connoisseur who has not tasted the latter does 
not know what the olive can be. Messenia, too, 
is the only region in Greece where the date 
ripens, a distinction it shares with only one other 
spot on European soil, Elche, in Southern Spain. 
Though Sparta cannot boast of the date, she is 
justly proud of her peaches, which are as excellent 
as they are abundant. The sojourner on the 
banks of the Eurotas can indulge in that delicious 
fruit to his heart's content without remorse for 
violence done to his purse^ Messenia, on the 
other hand, scores a triumph in figs, which are 
larger and more luscious than elsewhere, and as 
they ripen considerably earlier than in other 
regions and are the first to come on the market, 
they secure a handsome return to the growers, 
c 



18 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Kalamata has an advantage over Sparta in that 
it is in direct railway communication with Athens, 
although farther away as the crow flies. The 
Spartan must send his produce to the little port 
of Gythion to be carried by sea to Pirasus, or to 
Tripolitza and thence by rail to the capital ; but 
Tripolitza is a long way off, and in both cases 
the land transport is slow and expensive. A 
branch line from Tripolitza is sorely needed. 

It is not easy to convey in words a notion of 
what the Peloponnesus looks like. In an area 
of such unequal relief the aspect naturally varies 
greatly, though one is never out of sight of moun- 
tains. The country west of the great central range 
is much more wooded than the region east of it, 
though Sparta is far from being treeless. The 
barest regions are the high plateaus of Mantinasa 
and Megalopolis and the tobacco-growing plain of 
Argos, though the latter is relieved by frequent 
orange and lemon orchards ; and whilst the up- 
lands of Arcadia are generally speaking nude, the 
heaviest, timber grows in the valleys leading to 
them. The plane, the oak, and the fir are the 
chief timber trees/) 

Conspicuous in the Vale of Sparta are the tall 
poplars rising above the expanse of mulberry 
trees. The Eurotas, a clear stream, flows between 
banks fringed with oleanders. The dominant note 
of colour is rich green, relieved in winter by the 
gold of the orange groves, and in spring by their 
silver blossoms and the wax-like scarlet petals of 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 19 



the pomegranate. There is a profusion of wild- 
flowers, among which narcissi and a delicate pale 
blue iris hold the chief place/) 

One is apt to invest everything Spartan with a 
stern atmosphere, but, on the contrary, the valley 
has a smiling, contented aspect. The town is 
modern. It was planned and built by the Bava- 
rians in 1834. The heavy stone houses and broad 
streets are more suited to the climate of Germany 
than to that of Greece. They have plenty of 
space, however, set in the midst of gardens. A 
favourite resort of the townsfolk is Platanista, a 
level plot of ground in the angle formed by the 
confluence of the Eurotas and the Mangoula. 
Tradition has it that it was here that the Spartan 
boys were brought to be whipped. It is the play- 
ground of the youth of modern Sparta, frolicsome 
urchins, unmindful of the discipline to which their 
predecessors were subjected. And here their 
elders sip coffee and talk politics beneath the 
stately poplars, from amid whose trembling 
leaves comes the soft cooing of doves. Behind 
rises Taygetus, a mighty mountain-wall with 
pinnacles of snow clear-cut against the blue. In 
front the lofty barrier of Parnon shuts in the 
valley eastward. Parnon is far off, but Taygetus 
broods over Sparta and sends her his snows in 
the foaming waters of the Mangoula. He also 
sends his cold breath, a doubtful benefit, for the 
valley, exposed only to the south wind, has a very 
high summer temperature, and the sharp contrast 



20 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



between day and night is trying. The afternoons 
are very short, for the sun disappears early from 
a place which has a wall nearly 8000 feet high 
immediately west of it. Behind modern Sparta, 
in the foreground of the Taygetus, is the Sparta 
of the Middle Ages, perched on a precipitous 
detached rock over 2000 feet high, the Mistra of 
the Franks, the Misithra of the Byzantine despots. 
Built by Guillaume Villehardouin in 1247, it is 
one of the most remarkable relics of that by- 
path in the history of Greece, the Frankish 
domination. The Principality of Achaia lasted 
wellnigh two centuries, and its many vestiges 
lend to the Peloponnesus that note of Western 
feudalism, with its glamour of chivalry and 
romance, which contrasts so sharply with the 
spirit of antiquity and with that of Orientalism. 
The abandoned city, crowned by the ivied ruins 
of the castle of Villehardouin, is a unique his- 
torical museum. Its frescoed churches, its 
monastery and dwellings, with the escutcheons 
and devices of the knights, are rich in mediaeval 
French and Greco-Byzantine work, and mingled 
with these are the baths and fountains of the 
Turk, ornate with inscriptions in those elegant 
interlaced letters which make the Arabic char- 
acters an unrivalled medium for complex decorative 
design. 

The red-tiled roofs of the villages peeping from 
orchards on the slopes will strike the traveller from 
Northern Greece. A distinctive feature of the 



\ 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 21 



Peloponnesus is the prevalence of stone dwell- 
ings. This gives the country an air of neatness 
and comfort as compared with the squalid aspect 
of the mud walls of Thessaly. From north to 
south there is a progression of building material 
from mud through wood to stone. It does not 
hold true universally, of course, especially in the 
towns, but in the country generally. At Ara- 
khova, and in the mountains of Central Greece, 
the houses are usually of wood, favouring the 
development of that vigorous insect life which all 
travellers who fare through rustic Greece must be 
prepared to encounter. But the battalions are 
likely to be thinner in the Peloponnesian stone- 
built villages. 

It is a pleasant walk from Sparta to Trypi at 
the mouth of the gorge down which tumbles the 
Magoula. The small farms are intersected by 
rills of irrigation, vines are festooned in the 
orchards, white doves flit among them. At Trypi 
spreading plane trees are fast anchored by their 
enormous roots among the boulders of the tor- 
rent bed, and the stream is bordered by a haw- 
thorn hedge which, like the piping of the thrush, 
reminds one of home. So do the fair hair and 
blue eyes of the women striding after their trot- 
ting donkeys laden with vegetables for the town. 
That is one of the surprises of the Peloponnesus, 
to which we will return later. Trypi, like the rest 
of the countryside, is devoted chiefly to agricul- 
ture. The silkworm occupies the important posi- 



22 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



tion of the pig in Ireland, and miles of mulberry 
trees minister to his voracious appetite, whilst in 
every household may be heard a sound like that 
of a gently falling shower. It is the silkworm 
munching the succulent leaf he loves. Beautiful in 
situation is red-roofed Trypi looking out from the 
shadow of the mountain over the verdant expanse 
down which winds the silver ribbon of Eurotas. 
The people are proud of their big church on its 
lofty rock platform, the outcome of their self- 
denial. But it must not detain us, for we have 
rather an arduous journey ahead. We are bound 
for Messenia by the Langada of Magoula, the 
wildest and loftiest pass of Taygetus. But stay, 
here comes Aphrodite — not the Paphian goddess, 
but a Spartan maid who bears her name, a 
common one in Greece. Sturdy of limb, frank of 
countenance, the blonde tresses, escaping from the 
kerchief bound about her head, fall in wavy 
masses on her shoulders, and she brushes them 
away from her great blue eyes — the blue of the 
wild iris of her native hills. She is clad in the 
sleeveless cloak, white with black-broidered edges, 
which bears so close a resemblance to the eccle- 
siastical vestment the dalmatic, so that her greet- 
ing, Kyrie eleison, associated in the minds of us 
Westerns with the solemnities of religion, does 
not sound inappropriate. To her it is a part of 
familiar human intercourse, and surely never was 
greeting couched in sweeter, nobler words. She 
brings us a basket of wild strawberries culled 



THE LANG AD A OF M AN GO U LA. 



\Underwood & Underivood. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 23 



from the mountain-side— those small, long, deep 
crimson berries whose fragrance and flavour none 
of garden growth can approach. Take her gift, 
but do not offer her money. The Greeks of 
Sparta are proud, nor must any of the rustic 
population be measured by the moral standard of 
the Greeks in Levantine seaports. So we thank 
Aphrodite, who wishes us a safe journey and 
rejoins her friend Euphrosyne. Once more she 
waves her hand, and her last word is Khairete— 
Farewell. The two graceful figures, with linked 
arms, are the last we see of Trypi and of Sparta, 
as we turn to face the pass. The path leads at 
first between walls of yellowish rock veined with 
green and red. Like most passes, it follows the 
course of a stream in the gorge it has hollowed. 
Alpine scenery is much the same everywhere. 
Naked rocks, belts of dark pines, and occasional 
glimpses of snowy crests above — with lateral 
ravines to be negotiated — they are not bridged 
in this Langada. It has been improved of late 
years, and one has not to dismount so frequently. 
There are creepy bits nevertheless, where the 
ledge is uncomfortably inclined towards the edge 
of the precipice — places where the schist is smooth 
and slippery, others where the path is of loose 
screes, and passage of man and mule sends the 
pebbles bounding into the abyss. Altogether it 
is satisfactory to trust to one's own feet for much 
of the road, and watch the clever way in which the 
mules turn awkward corners, carefully measuring 



24 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



distances, poised sometimes on a rocky point with 
all four hoofs brought together, more like a cha- 
mois than a member of the equine race. The 
surroundings are of the same titanic character as 
in similar regions in Switzerland. The Langada 
of Taygetus differs perhaps in the colossal plane 
trees which mingle with the firs in the bed of the 
torrent, which is for the most part invisible 
beneath a bower of foliage, and in one place 
disappears altogether into the bowels of the earth, 
in one of those katavothroi not uncommon in 
Greece. One is glad to reach the summit, where 
there is a little chapel dedicated to St. Elias. The 
altitude is given as 4250 feet. North and south 
there is a vista of stately peaks rising nearly as 
high again, and westward one looks down on the 
Messenian plain and the blue gulf with Kalamata 
at its head. The landscape has a hue of rich 
velvety green, dotted with white splashes of 
village. It looks very fat and inviting, as no 
doubt it did to the Spartans of old. It takes a 
long time to reach it, however, and the chances 
are that the traveller has to sleep at Lada, a rough 
mountain village with none of the amenities of 
Trypi. 

Kalamata is the most important town in the 
Peloponnesus after Patras, and villadom attests 
its prosperity. The old part of the town is be- 
neath the citadel, which dates from 1204. Frank, 
Genoese, Turk, Venetian, and Turk again have 
held the place in turn, and there are vestiges of 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 25 



each. The staple products of the neighbourhood 
are fruit and silk. The forest of Koumbes, which 
extends from near Navarino to Androutsa, con- 
tains oaks of gigantic size. One soon perceives 
the timbered character of this side of the country, 
as well as the richness of the vegetation. The 
gardens in which the houses are embowered have 
a sub-tropical character which recalls Egypt. The 
olive trees are in forests rather than in groves, 
and they are well tended. One sees few of the 
gnarled old trunks which are picturesque, but do 
not pay. The orchards of orange and pome- 
granate are interlaced with vines trained from tree 
to tree, and enclosed by hedges of aloes or of the 
giant cactus, which bears the prickly pear, and 
together with the date palms reminds us that 
Africa is not far off. This warmest corner of the 
kingdom might be termed Grcecia Felix, but the 
amari aliquid exists in the malarial fevers which 
curse every district left undrained, more particu- 
larly the enclosed valleys in the mountains and 
the low strips on the coast. The valley of the 
Neda, which runs into the western sea, is studded 
with trees which attain an enormous girth — planes, 
evergreen oaks, and sycamore figs. South of the 
Neda the currant vine flourishes as well as on the 
Achaean littoral. The slopes are covered with 
vine, almond, and olive, and higher up the moun- 
tains the villages are girt about with orchards of 
apricot and pear. Such is the general aspect of 
the South - Western Peloponnesus. Into this 



26 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



meridional luxuriance is intruded a northern note. 
Not far from Mavromati, the ancient Messene, 
where the River Leukasia joins the Mavrozu- 
menos, there is a bridge that recalls the triple 
bridge near Crowland Abbey. From two piers in 
the centre, arches lead in three different directions 
to the three points of land formed by the conflu- 
ence. Ruined castles, the strongholds of Frankish 
barons, crown the heights, not only at Coron, at 
Modon, and at Navarino, but on many an inland 
crest. Most imposing of these is Karytenia, on a 
stupendous crag washed on three sides by the 
Alphseus. Karytenia, which is in a tolerable 
state of preservation, was built by Hugh de 
Brienne, one of that famous house which num- 
bered among its scions three Constables of France, 
a King of Jerusalem, an Emperor of Constanti- 
nople, and two Dukes of Athens, the last survivor 
of which fell at the battle of Poitiers. Karytenia 
has memories of later times, for it was successfully 
held by Kolokotrones against Ibrahim Pasha dur- 
ing the War of Independence. It is a fitting 
eyrie both for the freebooting barons of the Middle 
Ages and the old Klepht chieftain who is one of 
the heroes of nineteenth-century Greece. For 
here we are in Arcadia, the region whose name 
has become a symbol for rural innocence and 
peace. These riven peaks, deep gorges, sombre 
forests, and beetling cliffs hardly make a setting 
for the sentimental shepherds and shepherdesses 
of Watteau philandering on smooth-shaven lawns, 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 27 



and the " royal goatherds in silk and lace" who 
played at being Arcadians in the seventeenth 
century. It was a strange caprice of the Renais- 
sance to invest the rudest and remotest portion of 
the Peloponnesus with an atmosphere of ease and 
elegance. Theocritus sang of Sicilian shepherds, 
and they were rustic folk at least. The artificial 
shepherds of Virgil were not. But neither pre- 
tended that they were Arcadians. It was probably 
the glamour of the unknown that led to the peo- 
pling of Arcadia with imaginary inhabitants. For 
the real Arcadia was cut off from the world by 
mountain ramparts, a land of lofty plateaus and 
gloomy valleys where the winter snows lay long, 
the nurse of a race hardy, but dull of understand- 
ing, a consequence of its isolation from the cur- 
rent of humanity. The savage cult of Saturn 
lingered there for centuries after it had died out 
elsewhere, and throughout the most brilliant 
period of Greece we seek in vain for an Arcadian 
poet, philosopher, or artist. Philopcemen, the 
statesman and patriot, and Polybius, the historian, 
were products of Megalopolis, a city within the 
bounds of Arcadia, but having nothing in com- 
mon with Arcadian life, and itself the creation of 
a foreigner, the Theban Epaminondas. But if 
Arcadia failed to give her children the arts and 
graces of life, she bred in them the stern virtues 
of patience, sobriety, truthfulness, and courage. 
Like the Swiss of the Middle Ages, they were the 
mercenary soldiers of Greece. From their rough 



28 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



cradle they brought the qualities which made their 
services valued, and so they fought the battles of 
others for the bread which the niggard soil of 
their country grudged them. Melibceus did not 
carve the name of his love on the boles of trees, 
for he could not write. Neither did he carry a 
ribboned-crook, nor were the pipes ever at his 
lips ; but the quiver was always at his back and 
the bow in his ready hand. 

Pastoral occupations become a necessity where 
tillage is impossible, and in every land the wildest 
districts are the domain of the shepherd, who is 
the most uncultured element in the population, 
and also the hardiest. The youths of Sparta were 
not kept in the valley, but sent up into Taygetus 
to acquire the training which they turned to 
account against the Messenians of the plain. It 
was there they used to thrash the statue of Pan 
when the supply of game was short, as Neapoli- 
tans in these times upbraid San Gennaro for per- 
mitting Vesuvius to become unruly, and as some 
of the inhabitants of South America duck the 
image of their tutelary saint in a well for neglect- 
ing to protect them from flood or pestilence or 
earthquake. And so, to-day, the Arcadian moun- 
taineers are noted for their strength and hardi- 
hood, and are perforce shepherds. Every cottage 
has its flock, tended during the day by children, 
elusive, faun-like beings, who manifest neither 
pleasure nor discontent nor surprise at the 
presence of the stranger, so unlike in this to the 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 29 



inquisitive, obtrusive Greek child of the towns and 
villages of the lowlands. At sunset they are 
relieved of their task by their fathers, who keep 
watch by night against wolf and robber. At the 
end of October all the live stock is moved to the 
plains, marching in solid phalanx, goats in front, 
sheep in the middle, mules and donkeys behind, 
the well-armed shepherds and their fierce dogs 
on either flank. The Arcadian shepherd is not 
a communicative person, but if occasion arises 
for colloquy, it is well to be to windward of him, 
if you do not regard the odour of garlic in the 
light of an agreeable perfume, and to keep a 
respectful distance from his dog. The demeanour 
of the latter, however, generally renders this 
advice superfluous. 

A glance at the map will show how the surface 
of Arcadia is corrugated by a complex mountain 
system. There are two plateaus, roughly oval, 
where husbandry prevails. They are divided by 
the range of Mcenalos, the plain of Mantinaea to 
the north-east, and that of Megalopolis to the 
south-west. Both grow grain, and on that of 
Mantinasa hemp is cultivated for hasheesh which 
is smuggled into Egypt, where its importation is 
illicit. The plain is subject to inundations which 
cause it to be malarious in some districts, espe- 
cially near the ancient sites of Tegasa and Man- 
tinsea. Tripolitza — Tripolis is its official desig- 
nation — owes its name, it is said, to its having 
been built from the debris of three antique cities, 



30 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Tegasa, Mantinaea, and Pallantion. It is, how- 
ever, itself modern, dating from the eighteenth 
century, when it was chosen by the Turks as the 
capital of the Morea, probably on account of its 
central position. The present town was built in 
1828, the former one having been destroyed by 
the Turks during the War of Independence. It 
is the centre of the iron industry for the Pelo- 
ponnesus, why it is not easy to say, for the 
neighbourhood produces no iron, and its situation, 
remote from any seaport, is unfavourable for the 
importation of the raw material, as well as for 
the distribution of the manufactured article. The 
industry gives it its chief importance, and makes 
it black and busy. It has also a large trade in 
sheepskins. It is one of the most unpicturesque 
places in Greece. The plain is monotonous, and 
bounded by bare mountains. Its elevated situa- 
tion, three thousand feet above sea-level, and 
exposed to the north winds, makes it bleak in 
winter, when the snow often lies on the ground 
for a considerable time. Notwithstanding these 
drawbacks, there seems to have been a disposition 
on the part of the Greeks to follow the lead of the 
Turks in giving it prominence, for in 1875 a 
royal palace was begun there, and some progress 
was made with the walls, which still remain ; but 
the King abandoned the idea, and chose Tatoi, 
which is still his favourite residence. The plain 
of Megalopolis is devoted almost entirely to the 
cultivation of wheat, barley, and maize, whilst 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 31 



that of Mantinaea is in part vineyards, a trade in 
wine having its centre at Tripolitza. 

The valley of the Alphasus leads from Arcadia 
into the plain of Elis. The upper portion is 
thickly wooded with oak and plane, and rapid 
affluents come down through clefts in the red 
earth. The steep slopes are covered with masses 
of rhododendrons, a magnificent spectacle when 
in bloom. Lower down, the river sprawls over 
a wide and shallow bed with numerous islets, 
whence colossal plane trees rise from an under- 
growth of laurel and myrtle. This is a character- 
istic and oft-recurring feature of the country. 
The planes love to root themselves in torrent beds, 
feeding on the moisture which filters below, their 
dense green foliage contrasting sharply with the 
tattered pines on the heights. Some of the most 
romantic situations in the Peloponnesus are to be 
found in the Erymanthus range, the border-line 
between Achaia and Arcadia. Its summits are 
seen from the Gulf of Corinth and Patras. Here 
are some of the most extensive oak forests, over- 
looked by threatening precipices. The mountains 
of Achaia abound in fine scenery, and a good idea 
may be obtained of it with little fatigue by a 
journey on the mountain railway which connects 
Kalavryta with Diakophtou, a station on the line 
between Corinth and Patras. The Kalavryta 
railway, which is on the Abt system, is a daring 
piece of engineering, and the diminutive train 
climbs the gorge in a most wonderful way, dodg- 



32 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



ing awkward corners through short tunnels, 
crossing and recrossing the ravine by bridges at 
a dizzy height above the boiling torrent, affording 
fleeting visions of terrible grandeur mingled with 
bits of exquisite beauty. For in spring the ledges 
of the cliffs are shelves overflowing with flowers. 
Daisies are especially profuse, blooming in every 
cranny and fractuosity of the rock. We meet 
with many of our familiar favourites in the flora 
of the Peloponnesus — hawthorn and dog-rose, 
woodbine and the wild convolvulus, whilst the 
crocus, the cyclamen, and the divine blue of the 
squill greet us as high as we care to climb. The 
anemone, too, is with us everywhere, not our pale 
flowers of the woods, but a variety of rich and 
brilliant hues, making a gorgeous carpet. Among 
the flowers strange to us at home, the tall spikes 
of the asphodel are most abundant. 

But it is time to turn from the land to its people. 
There are many spots to which the author would 
fain take his readers — the glen in Argolis which 
leads to Epidauros ; majestic Ithome, most beauti- 
ful of Greek mountains ; Kyllene and the falls of 
the Styx; Stromion, where the Neda plunges under- 
ground, and where in summer, when its bed is 
dry, one may walk through its tunnelled course 
bristling with coloured stalactites ; the wonderful 
rock of Monemvasia, that hoary relic of the 
Middle Ages which gave its name to the Malmsey 
wine of our forefathers ; Bassae, where on a lofty 
spur of Lykaion stands that lonely temple dedi- 



THE KALAVRYTA RAILWAY. {.Underwood & Underwood. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 33 



cated to Apollo the Helper, on a site which makes 
it the most impressive of all Greek ruins. One 
who has been there cannot look at the Centaurs 
and Lapiths, the Greeks and Amazons of the 
frieze in the British Museum which adorned the 
building of Ictinus, without recalling the splen- 
dour of its natural surroundings. 

Mention of the remains of antiquity in these 
pages has been avoided as far as possible. They 
constitute, of course, the supreme interest of 
Greece, but adequate descriptions of them are to 
be found in the guide-books, and for those who 
seek a fuller knowledge, there are the works of 
specialists, scholars, archaeologists, architects, 
artists, historians. But in this particular case 
it is impossible to disconnect the site from the 
temple which gives it significance. Certainly but 
for the existence of the temple the site would not 
have been visited ; and in like manner, were it not 
for ancient Greece, modern Greece would be com- 
paratively unknown. This would be a pity, for, 
apart from its august associations, the land has 
many charms, as this very imperfect sketch of it 
attempts to show. 

We were in the train winding up the ravine to- 
wards Kalavryta, and as we are going to say 
something about the inhabitants of the Pelo- 
ponnesus, we could not have chosen a more suit- 
able spot, for the Peloponnesus is the most Greek 
portion of Greece. It is the citadel of Hellenism. 
And here in Achaia new Hellas was born. In 



34 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



February, 1821, there was a little meeting at Vos- 
tizza, only a few miles from Diakophtou, the 
station from which we started. On the 7th April, 
at Patras, in the church, before the Holy 
Mysteries, the people took an oath to free Greece 
or die. The Archbishop of Patras was summoned 
to Tripolitza, the seat of the Turkish Government. 
He came here instead, with a few friends, and at 
the convent of Megaspeleion, which we shall 
reach presently — it is about three-quarters of the 
way to Kalavryta — the flag of liberty was first 
raised in that same month of April, 1821. In 
1827 the Greek Government was established at 
Nauplia, and that Peloponnesian city was the 
capital until King Otho removed to Athens in 
1834. 

The raising of the standard of revolt is com- 
memorated annually on the 6th April (25th April 
of the Greek calendar). But the revolution was 
general on the 2nd April. The flag is preserved 
at the monastery of Lavra, situated between 
Megaspeleion and Kalavryta. It is a white 
banner without the blue cross, but inscribed with 
the words — IIpo EXevOeplas — For Liberty. It was 
there that Archbishop Germanos repaired from 
Kalavryta after disobeying the summons to Tri- 
politza. But it was within the convent of Mega- 
speleion that the plans were first discussed, and 
the monks collected money for arms for some time 
ere the first outbreak. When that occurred, it 
was there that the women and children took 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 35 



refuge. A year or two later, when war raged 
fiercely, the monks successfully defended it 
against the Egyptian troops of Ibrahim Pasha. 
Thus the spot is sacred ground for the Hellenic 
nation, for it was here and at Aigion (Vostizza), 
on the shore below that a new Achaian League 
laid the foundations of Free Greece. Mega- 
speleion, as its name implies, is a great cave in 
the face of a precipice three thousand feet above 
the sea. The facade of the convent is built across 
the mouth of the cave, and seen from below looks 
as though it were plastered on the face of the cliff 
which overhangs it — a sort of huge martin's nest. 
More will be said about it in another chapter. 

The torch of freedom was kindled in Achaia 
and Greece was re-established as a nation in 
Argolis, two facts of which the Peloponnesians 
are justly proud. The first National Assembly 
was held at Piade, near Epidauros, in the De- 
cember of 1 82 1. At Larissa, the fortress of 
Argos, the defeat of the Turks in 1822 led to 
the Proclamation of Independence, and the first 
seat of Government, as we have seen, was at Nau- 
plia. The Peloponnesus had seen less of Turkish 
rule than the rest of the Greek mainland. It was 
the battlefield of Ottoman and Venetian in the 
seventeenth century, and was ruled by Venice 
from 1699 to 17 15. Its inhabitants are of diverse 
origin. The Slavs were expelled or absorbed 
after their final defeat at the battle of Patras in 
807 a.d. The Franks, when they invaded the 



36 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 

country in 1205, found isolated Slav communities 
— the Melings on Taygetus, and the Skortans on 
the heights between Elis and Arcadia, but the 
Greek was preponderant. Nor did the Frankish 
domination materially affect him. He remained 
the dominant factor. The origin of the Albanians 
in the Peloponnesus is obscure. The fiscal ra- 
pacity of the Byzantine Government led to the 
depopulation of the country, and Theodore, Des- 
pot of Misithra, who died in 1407, introduced 
Albanian colonists, and there were further intru- 
sions, notably in 1463, after the Turks had con- 
quered Nauplia. But there were probably 
immigrations previous to these. 1 At present the 
Albanian element dominates in Argolis, and in 
Corinthia, in the southern part of Elis, and on the 
west coast from the mouth of the Alphseus to 
Navarino. But the Albanian of the Peloponnesus 
has retained less of his individuality than the 
Albanian of Attica, who has in a measure pre- 
served his tongue, though that is disappearing. 
In 1830 the Bavarian officials had to learn 
Albanian, and there was formerly a tribunal at 
Athens in which that language was used. 

During the Venetian rule in the eighteenth 
century the population doubled owing to a great 
influx of Northern Greeks, and in 182 1 and the 
following years, when the Peloponnesus alone was 
free, thousands of Greeks flocked into it from all 

1 They are mentioned as mercenaries of Nicephorus Vasilaki 
in 1075. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 37 



parts of the Turkish dominions. There are two 
other elements of the population — the Mainotes 
and the Tzakones. These have probably more 
right to claim descent from the Greeks of antiquity 
than any other section of the Greek-speaking peo- 
ples of to-day. They are, in any case, very interest- 
ing vestiges of the past, the Tzakones mainly on 
account of their language and the Mainotes for their 
distinct individuality and customs. In both respects 
they have remained isolated and unchanged. 

The Mainotes inhabit the central prong of the 
trident formed by the three great southern pro- 
montories of the Peloponnesus. The Tzakones 
are found on the western prong, the ancient 
Laconia, which terminates in Cape Malea, the 
Cape St. Angelo of the Middle Ages, whose 
squalls were occasioned by the fanning of the 
wings of the Archangel Michael. Both are brave. 
They took the chief share in driving out the 
Franks in the days of the Emperor Michael VIII. 
But they differ In other respects. The Tzakones 
are honest and peaceful, and whilst they traded 
all over the ^Egean, the Mainotes were engaged 
in piracy and plunder. The Tzakones number at 
present about fifteen thousand families, one thou- 
sand of which are settled at Leonidi, on the 
western side of the Gulf of Nauplia. They were 
formerly more numerous. The province of 
Tzakonia was extensive when the Franks came, 
and the Chronicle of the Morea 1 speaks of it as 

1 Composed about 1300 a.d. 



38 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



apart from the rest of the Morea. In 1573 
Crusius found fourteen Tzakonian villages be- 
tween Monemvasia and Nauplia. There are now 
only seven. In Byzantine times there was a 
Tzakonian colony at Constantinople. The men 
served in the fleet, and their skill as mariners was 
highly esteemed. In those days the Tzakones 
occupied the whole of the country from Argolis to 
Cape Malea. To this day they speak a tongue 
which in vocalisation and in distinct grammatical 
forms is recognised by philologists as a survival of 
a dialect of Doric. No other idiom of modern 
Greek is of so ancient a type. 1 The schoolmaster 
in Greece, as elsewhere, is the arch-enemy of 
traditional modes of speech, but Tzakonic, though 
much reduced in area, still lives on the Laconian 
shore, and it is a warrantable presumption to 
attribute to the Tzakones a more direct descent 
from the ancient inhabitants of the country than 
any other section of the population. Hopf, who 
combats the theory of Fallmerayer as to the Slav 
origin of the modern Greeks, upholds it, strange 
to say, as regards the Tzakones. Bishop Willi- 
bald on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 
eighth century touched at Monemvasia, to which 

1 The Tzakonian language is treated of in Leake's Researches 
in Greece, p. 196 ; also in his Peloponnesiaca, p. 304. Those 
seeking fuller information may be referred to Fr. Thiersch : " Ueber 
die Sprache der Zakonen," published in the Transactions of the 
Royal Academy of Sciefice of Munich in 1832 ; to G. Deville : 
Etude du dialecte Tzaconien (Paris, 1866) ; and to the Ypafx/xariKr] 
rijs TaaKuvLKTjs dcaXeKTOv (Athens, 1870) of M. Th. Oikonomos, a 
Tzakonian by birth. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 39 



he alludes as being in the Slavonian land. Sir 
Rennell Rodd points out that a Slav tribe merged 
in the pre-existing population may have left its 
name behind in a region where a language had 
survived, not understood by the rest of the Greeks. 

It is a popular belief that the Mainotes have 
never been conquered. It would be more exact 
to say that they have never willingly submitted 
to control, and have been successful in repelling 
invasions, and they have invariably obtained 
favourable treatment from the dominant power. 
Even now they enjoy immunity from the greater 
portion of the taxes to which the rest of Greece 
is subjected. They were certainly reduced by 
Villehardouin, who built his castle of ' ' Grant 
Maigne, " near Cape Matapan in 1468. Their 
land was ravaged by the Catalans in 1601, and in 
1614 they were subdued by the Turks and made 
to pay tribute, not a heavy one. Legend says 
that it consisted of as much gold as would lie on 
the flat of a sword, and another version has it 
that a purse was presented hanging at the point 
of a sword. Their period of greatest liberty was 
during the Venetian rule of the Peloponnesus, 
when they were practically independent. They 
have never easily acknowledged any central 
authority. They rebelled against the Greek 
Government in 1831, and again in 1834, when 
the Bavarian regency ordered them to destroy 
their towers. Yet they rendered noble service to 
Greece in the War of Independence. Twice they 



40 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



repulsed Ibrahim Pasha, in 1825 and 1826, when 
he advanced against them from both sides. But 
first they made a preliminary raid on the villages 
for the freedom of whose inhabitants they were 
fighting. For they preserved one characteristic 
of the Spartans, 1 from whom they claim descent, 
in exalting plunder to the rank of a virtue, though 
they were never mercenary brigands nor vulgar 
footpads. Maina is not all barren, as is often 
supposed. The districts east and west of their 
peninsula export oil, valonea, and red-dye. It is 
in Mesa-Maine, the shelf which runs along the 
mountain-spine, and the wind-swept rocky ex- 
tremity of Matapan, that grain is a luxury, and 
barley is sown in the crevices of the rocks. Here 
the ordinary fare consists of black cakes made 
from lupins, " the grapes of Maina," and the fruit 
of the wild cactus replaces the figs of more 
favoured regions. Flights of quails which are 
exported to France yield an uncertain revenue to 
the people. This is the Kakavoulia, "the land 
of evil designs," for long centuries the nursery of 
pirates. It was to it that Abbot Benedict of 
Peterborough referred in the Itinerary of Richard I 
— gens mala ibi est. And ill folk they certainly 
were until comparatively recent times, But in- 
justice has been done the Mainotes by assuming 
the Kakavouliotes to be representative of the 

1 A Mainote priest told an English traveller who visited Maina 
in the early nineteenth century that the predatory habits of the 
people were derived from the laws of Lycurgus. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 41 



whole people. However, piracy is extinct. Emi- 
gration has replaced it, and education is gradually 
effacing distinctive peculiarities. Yet Maina is 
conservative, as it has always been. It remained 
pagan until nearly the end of the ninth cen- 
tury, and to-day presents aspects of a primitive 
state of society. Maina is the original home of 
the blood feud, which it is supposed to have intro- 
duced to Corsica as the vendetta. The Mainote 
colony which settled in that island in 1673 still 
exists at Cargese. The vendetta survives in spite 
of the law, though to nothing like the same extent 
as when, sometimes for twenty years, families 
were at feud, and reconciliation only came about 
after many members on both sides had fallen. 
Some of the loopholed tower dwellings, which 
were a necessity in those days, still exist. The 
entrance is reached only by a ladder, which in 
case of feud was always drawn up. The women 
only left the dwelling, for according to the law of 
vendetta they are inviolable, as are the guests. 
A person whose life is sought goes scatheless if 
he accompanies a guest. The Mainote scru- 
pulously observes the rules of the game, and 
holds the common assassin in supreme contempt. 
Outside the bounds of Maina the feud ceases, and 
no self-respecting Mainote would attack a foe 
beyond its borders. For, whatever may be thought 
of the practice, it has its chivalrous side. 
Treachery is abhorred, and due notice must be 
given of intention to attempt the life of a foe. It 



42 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



belongs to a barbarous social code, but it is law, 
and far removed from lawless murder. Indeed, 
its existence militates against the ignoble brawls 
so frequently attended by fatal results, too 
frequent in Greece, and from which Maina 
is comparatively free. Another and pleasanter 
feature is the duty of hospitality and the sacred- 
ness of the guest, as well as the respect enter- 
tained for women. The Mainote at home leaves 
most of the work to the woman, but her person is 
safe wherever she goes. The Mainote mother 
carries her child in a sheepskin bag which she 
hangs on a branch whilst she tills the field, or 
on a nail whilst she kneads the bread, singing to 
him war songs the while as a lullaby. When 
he is ten, his father takes him in hand and teaches 
him, as a first duty, to handle a gun. Though 
averse to work at home, the Mainote will work 
abroad. He finds his way to America, but not 
frequently. The Greek army depends largely on 
him for its non-commissioned officers, for he 
really likes soldiering, and often remains in the 
service after his compulsory term has expired. 
He is very clannish, like all mountaineers, and 
there is great solidarity amongst Mainote com- 
munities in other parts of Greece. In common 
with other Greeks they are keen to avail them- 
selves of education. Many Greek army officers 
are Mainotes, and there are some holding impor- 
tant civil appointments. It is perhaps as well to 
say that the traveller in Maina is safer than the 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 43 



stranger in London or Paris. South of Gythion 
he will find no inn, but the Mainotes in the capital 
are only too pleased to furnish a letter of introduc- 
tion. One will suffice, for it will procure him 
others, and the Mainotes are exceedingly hospit- 
able. He will see nothing of vendettas, for 
though Mainotes affirm that vendetta law still 
holds good, they seem of late to be of opinion 
that the custom is "one more honoured in the 
breach than the observance." He will meet with 
nothing more remarkable in the matter of dress 
than an occasional survival of the baggy breeches, 
which are more common on the islands. LjOddly 
enough, Athens, with all its modernity, is the 
best place in Greece for costume. The Albanians 
of the Attic plain and the neighbouring island of 
Salamis still wear it, both men and women, and 
some of them are constantly in and out of town. / 
In the more remote districts the unpicturesque, 
but far less costly European clothes, mostly 
" ready made," have supplanted it, and so it is in 
Maina. But if the traveller is prepared for simple 
fare and primitive accommodation, there is no 
reason why he should not penetrate as far as 
Tasnarum, where he will find the mouth of Tar- 
tarus, through which Hercules dragged up " the 
hound of Hell," a cave of modest dimensions, and 
not in any way terrible, beneath the hill on which 
stands the Chapel of the Asomaton, part of whose 
walls almost certainly belonged to the Temple of 
Poseidon, to whom the inhabitants of Maina clung 



44 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



long after the rest of the world had embraced the 
Faith first unfolded to Greece on the Athenian 
Areopagus. 

Here on this bleak headland of Matapan, the 
Ultima Thule of the Peloponnesus, we will take 
leave of its people. They are, as we have seen, 
diverse in origin and in environment, but they 
have been welded into a more homogeneous mass 
than the denizens of any other part of the king- 
dom. The force which has moulded them, which 
has determined the type of nationality, is the 
Hellenic spirit, whose work was finally accom- 
plished in the War of Independence. The 
Peloponnesus may be termed, in truth, the heart 
of Hellas. Its inhabitants taken altogether are 
more sympathetic than in other regions. This is 
no doubt in part owing to their social condition. 
The small farm and individual ownership are the 
rule, and they conduce to the formation of a sober, 
frugal, industrious, and worthy people. The 
manners of the rural population are gentler here 
than elsewhere, and this is perhaps due to the 
greater attention paid by parents to the education 
of their children. The school attendance in 
Laconia and Argolis is larger in proportion than 
in any other provinces of mainland Greece. The 
Cyclades bear the palm in this respect. 

The term Peloponnesus has been used in these 
pages because it is the official designation, as it 
was up to the Turkish conquest, with the excep- 
tion of the Frankish and Venetian periods. The 



A YOUNG MAI NOTE. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 45 



Franks used the word Morea exclusively, but 
the Venetians appear to have alternated it with 
Peloponnese. They gave Morosini as a mark of 
honour the title of the Peloponnesian. The 
derivation of Morea from the Greek morea on 
account of the supposed resemblance of the out- 
line of the peninsula to that of a mulberry leaf is 
purely fanciful. It has a much closer resemblance 
to the leaf of the Oriental plane, as Strabo ob- 
serves. The Slav word more, the sea, has been 
suggested, and rejected as against the principle of 
Slavonic derivation. Moreover the Slav tongue, 
if it were ever the dominant one, had practically 
disappeared before the advent of the name Morea. 
The assumption of Hopf seems to be reasonable, 
namely, that Moraia arose by metathesis from 
Romaia, the country of the Romaioi, but he was 
mistaken in supposing that the word was un- 
known before the Frankish conquest. The Franks 
arrived in 1205, and the name has been discovered 
by Mr. Sathas in a manuscript in the British 
Museum dated 11 11. Personally, the author 
prefers Morea, as being easier to utter and 
to write, but it has fallen into almost complete 
desuetude. 

There remains to be noticed yet one section of 
the inhabitants of the Greek mainland — the nomad 
Vlach shepherds of Pindus. Rightly they should 
have been placed among the folk of Northern 
Greece. But they wander periodically beyond its 
limits, and differ so much from the rest of the 



46 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



population — although Greek in creed and nation- 
ality — that they may be classed apart. 

It is not possible to fix with precision the limits 
of this singular people. 1 They extend far beyond 
the Greek frontier into Turkey, but within the 
kingdom they wander along the central range of 
Pindus, westward to the Agrapha district, east- 
ward along Mount CEta to the shores of Locris, 
and southward to the Gulf of Corinth, which is 
their boundary line. Parnassus, Helicon, and 
Cithasron are theirs, and they stretch along the 
Attic hills, Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus, to 
Cape Sunium. The Peloponnesus knows them 
not, but they hold the mountains of Eubcea. In 
winter they descend to the lowlands, and are 
found on the plain of Attica in the neighbourhood 

1 The origin of the Vlachs is obscure. Some writers claim for 
them an ancient Thracian parentage which would give them 
racial priority to the Hellenes. They are, at present, mainly con- 
fined to the mountain-rib of Grammos and Pindus, though they 
are found in Macedonia and Bulgaria. Their centre may be placed 
at Metzovo, between Trikala and Yanina. They are passionately 
addicted to wandering. In Turkey they own pack-horses, and 
are often pedlars on a large scale. They have a common tongue, 
a Latin dialect which has an affinity with the Roumanian lan- 
guage, though their relation to the Roumanian nation is not 
precisely known. They emigrate to other lands, where some of 
them have amassed fortunes as bankers. In spite of their migrat- 
ing propensities, they are the best builders in Turkey. Their 
houses are better than any others, and formerly they had a repu- 
tation for the construction of cupolas. Their sympathies are 
Hellenic and their creed Orthodox. It would be grossly unjust 
to regard the rude shepherds here described as representatives of 
the Vlach people, a race physically and mentally well-endowed, 
which has furnished Greece with some of her most distinguished 
citizens. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 47 



of the capital, in Bceotia near Thebes, in Megaris, 
on the marshy levels about Marathon, and in the 
country round Livadia and Lamia. When they 
have sold their lambs for Easter and when their 
ewes have lost their milk, so that they can travel 
with safety, they seek the heights again, where 
they remain until the following winter. These 
migrations are effected in a leisurely fashion, from 
the plain to the lower hills and thence to the loftier 
ranges, and vice versa, so that they attain their 
greatest altitude in the summer heats and reach 
their lowest level in mid-winter, when they pitch 
their goat-hair tents and form their mandra or 
sheepfold. On the mountains they construct rude 
huts of brushwood and pine branches, where the 
women and children remain, whilst the men lead 
the flocks along the high plateaus, sleeping in the 
open in all weathers, wrapped in their thick 
grey woollen cloaks. This is their life for 
months together, alone with their dogs and 
their charges. Thus one rarely sees their women 
except when they are on the line of march. 
These latter are strong, bony, ill-favoured 
creatures, harsh of voice, leathern-skinned, clad 
in coarse homespun, and very dirty withal. This 
last remark applies also to the men, whose kilts 
and long, tight woollen hose are of any hue but 
white, their original colour. Garments which 
are very rarely changed, and are always slept in, 
as well as the sheepskins which are used as couches 
in the mandra, are strongly suggestive of vermin. 



48 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



The appearance of the men is not prepossessing. 
Their long, matted hair, bleached into a dull 
russet by exposure to the weather, and rough, 
unkempt beard, frame a long, osseous countenance 
with a receding forehead and eyes close set on 
either side of a thin aquiline nose. The expression 
is cunning, distrustful, and indicative of lurking 
malevolence. Nor does it belie the character of 
him who wears it. The Vlach shepherd is in 
general hostile in his attitude to the settled 
population, with which he has as few relations 
as possible. His taciturnity places him in marked 
contrast to the loquacious Greek, ever eager for 
a chat with a stranger. He speaks Greek after his 
manner, but it is hard to comprehend his rough 
dialect, as he jerks out uncouth words. But 
among his own people he talks a jargon based on 
the Latin idiom spoken by the Ruman Vlachs of 
the north. He is orthodox so far as he has any 
religion. His orthodoxy consists chiefly in send- 
ing for a priest to bless his marriage, but he does 
not wait until a priest is within hail, and the 
religious ceremony usually comes after the 
marriage. The chelingas or head-man of each 
slant or community pays a small sum for the 
right of winter pasturage in the lowlands. But 
there citizenship ends. The Vlach ignores the 
law and defies it. His presence in the vicinity of 
civilisation is marked by rapine. He will steal 
the flocks of the peasant when he can, and will 
pasture his own flocks on their growing crops. 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 49 



He is a nuisance to the neighbourhood he visits, 
and the peasantry are heartily glad when he takes 
his departure in spring to share the mountain with 
the wild boar and the eagle. Devastation marks 
his progress. He is the chief cause of the 
destruction of the forests with its serious climatic 
effects. His goats devour all the young shoots 
and bark and kill the saplings, and he is usually 
the author of the forest fires which have done 
so much to denude the country. It was from the 
Vlach shepherds that the brigands were mainly 
recruited when brigandage was rife. When 
Mr. Vyner and his companions were murdered 
near Marathon in 1870, six out of the seven 
brigands captured were Vlach shepherds. The 
horror and indignation aroused throughout 
Europe by that tragedy put the Greek Govern- 
ment on its mettle, and efficient measures were 
taken to rid the country of an intolerable scourge. 
Since then Central Greece has been as free of 
brigandage as the Peloponnesus, and the con- 
venient neighbourhood of the northern frontier 
has been the only region at all insecure. Those 
Vlachs who did not take an active part in the 
exploits of brigands were always ready to aid 
them. They gave information as to the route 
of an intended victim, kept watch whilst the 
capture was being made, signalled the approach 
of danger when troops were in pursuit, and the 
intermediary when the ransom was being nego- 
tiated was almost always a shepherd. That 

E 



50 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



sphere of activity is now happily obsolete, but if 
there are still potential bandits in the land they are 
to be found in the shepherd population of the 
Pindus, and it is on that range and in the 
mountains of ^Etolia that the lawless element 
would display itself were political convulsions to 
upset the reign of order in the country. The 
term Greek brigand as used by Westerns is for the 
most part a misnomer. The brigands were in 
nearly all cases Vlachs or Albanians, and the 
assertion that the Greek peasantry were in league 
with them was a libel on a people in the main 
honest, upright and hospitable. Who the real 
abettors were has been shown. The peasant was 
at the mercy of the brigands, and he knew that 
if he denounced them he would be subject to 
reprisals of the most atrocious character, instances 
of which were only too fresh in his memory. But 
the moment he received the least support from the 
Government he was foremost in the field. Thus 
the villagers of Arakhova organised themselves 
and destroyed the band of Daveli, who had 
established himself on Parnassus, and for years 
had made that famous mountain a name of terror, 
free only to his kinsmen the shepherds. He had 
come, like the rest of them from the north, from 
Pindus, and, like the rest, his operations had for 
their terrain the eastern plains. The central 
spine and rugged north-west of Greece was 
always the breeding-ground of brigands, whence 
they descended to the eastern lowlands, where 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 51 



there was most booty. Daveli's followers varied 
in numbers, sometimes they were sixty strong, 
miscreants of the blackest dye. One of their 
habits was to plunge the feet of their captives into 
boiling oil to make them divulge the whereabouts 
of their treasure. The threat was usually enough, 
however. They acted with cynical effrontery and 
for a long time with impunity. Even so far off as 
Chalcis, in Eubcea, they carried off a young girl 
of a well-to-do family in broad daylight. It was 
one Christmas Day, and her parents were paying 
visits. Her shoes were cut to pieces by the rocks, 
and one of the band walked calmly into Livadia 
to buy another pair. They sent down to the 
village of Kastri (Delphi) for a priest, taking 
good care that the worthy cleric obeyed the 
summons, in order that the young lady should 
not lack spiritual consolation. Pending negotia- 
tions they frequently displayed her on points of the 
rocks visible from below, in order that her friends 
might know she was alive and well. They were 
playing for a heavy ransom, and they got it. Even 
then, Daveli was not sure of his own cut-throats, 
and sent her under the care of a shepherd, by 
another way down the mountain. He did not 
wish to lose his reputation and the chance of 
another rich capture. But things did not always 
end so pleasantly. The band had many murders 
to its account. Did the slightest suspicion rest 
on any peasant as to betrayal of their hiding- 
place, however groundless, he was made away 



52 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



with. The day of reckoning came at last. The 
mountain was surrounded by troops and the band 
was gradually pushed into a defile. But it was 
the peasantry of Arakhova under the leadership 
of one Megas who really came to close quarters 
with and exterminated it. Twenty-six out of the 
thirty of which it was then composed were killed, 
and so cheated the gallows. Daveli died by the 
hand of Megas, who himself fell shortly after- 
wards. A stone on the spot — it is, by the way, the 
scene of the unwitting parricide of OEdipus — 
records the event, and the tragoudi which com- 
memorates the heroic death of Megas is still 
chanted in Arakhova. 

Before leaving the shepherds, their dogs claim 
a word. We are apt to associate the name of 
sheep-dog with the collie. That graceful and 
sympathetic member of the canine family is far 
removed from the savage cerberi who guard the 
folds of Greece. Huge and powerful mastiffs, 
with heavy jowls and ensanguined eyes, they are 
no doubt valuable auxiliaries in the presence of 
marauding wolves. But, like their masters, they 
are of low intelligence, and they take everyone 
except their masters for a wolf. The solitary 
pedestrian, entering a mandra unwarily, would 
stand a good chance of being devoured. There 
are tales of people who have met this fate. The 
writer cannot vouch for their truth. Dog stories 
in Greece resemble snake stories in India. But 
the event is quite possible. The dogs are really 



THE GREEK MAINLAND 53 



a formidable danger, and it is well to give sheep- 
folds a wide berth. 1 The ferocious brutes do not 
attack those only who approach the folds, but 
when the flock is moving to new pastures they 
march on either flank, and rush upon all they 
meet. Their masters appear to take a malicious 
pleasure in seeing a stranger thus assaulted, for 
they are by no means ready to call off their dogs. 
As a rule, the shepherd leans on his staff and 
looks steadily the other way. These ill-condi- 
tioned Molossians must always be reckoned with 
in mountain excursions, and on their account 
alone it is well to be armed, though the shooting 
of a dog might have serious consequences, for the 
shepherds handle their long guns with great skill. 
The Greeks justly regard the presence of these 
unsociable nomads as a perilous nuisance. Pro- 
posals have been made at various times to force 
them to settle, which would be a means of getting 

1 Schliemann relates how in Ithaca, being set upon by four mas- 
tiffs, he suddenly thought of the passage in the Odyssey, where 
Ulysses, in a like predicament, "prudently sat down" {avrhp 
Odvaaevs efcro Kepboavvrj) : "I sat down, and the four dogs, ready 
to devour me, barked in a circle round me, but without touching 
me." But he dared not stir a limb until help arrived in the person 
of the owner of the animals, who called them off. This method 
seems to have been generally recognised. Pliny says that the 
ferocity of dogs is quelled by the object of their attack sitting on 
the ground : " Impetus canum et sasvitia mitigatur ab homine 
considente humi." And Aristotle (Rhet., ii. 3) uses it as an illustra- 
tion. " Let anger cease against those who humble themselves, 
for even dogs do not bite those who sit down (Toi)s Kadi^ovras)." 
But only a Schliemann could recall a passage of Homer in such a 
position, and he had the luck to have to deal with an Ithacan 
peasant, and not with a Vlach shepherd. 



54 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



rid of them, as they would never submit to a 
sedentary life, and would speedily betake them- 
selves beyond the frontier. No steps have been 
taken, and the Vlachs still remain as they have 
been for centuries, lords of the mountains, 
throughout all the vicissitudes which have caused 
the plains to change hands many times. 



CHAPTER II 



THE ISLES 

IN nine cases out of ten the Greek one meets 
outside his own country is an islander. The 
majority of those who have founded great houses 
of business, and have made a name in the world 
of commerce and finance, are of island origin. In 
Greece itself, the immigrant from the islands is 
easily distinguishable from the native of the main- 
land by his manners and appearance. He is more 
alert, of quicker wit, more expansive, a better 
linguist, and more ready to get into touch with 
strangers. He has the handiness of the sailor, 
the keen outlook of the trader. The continental 
Greek, on the other hand, is slower of speech and 
action, more aloof in manner ; he is, in short, a 
peasant, and even when engaged in pursuits other 
than rural, the soil seems to cling to him. On the 
Greek mainland, the Boeotian character extends 
over a far larger area than Bceotia itself. It is the 
islander who has won for the Greeks their reputa- 
tion for enterprise. He is a man of the world, 
because the aridity of his native rocks has forced 
him out into the world to seek a livelihood, and in 
seeking one he has not seldom found a fortune. 

55 



56 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



But it is not physical environment alone that has 
differentiated him from his continental compatriot. 
History and race have had their share in his evolu- 
tion. Nor are the Greek islanders by any means 
all cast in one mould. The individuality of the 
Ionian is not that of the native of the Cyclades. 
Moreover, island differs from island in its people. 
Each has its peculiarities of manners and speech, 
its own customs and traditions. To give a de- 
tailed account of these would be a task beyond the 
writer's knowledge and would far exceed the 
limits of this volume. But it would be absurd 
to pretend to convey a notion of the Hellenic 
people without delineating the salient features of 
a section which has had so large a share in the 
national development. Let us take first the group 
nearest and best known to us. 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 

The people of the Ionian Islands are a link 
between Europe and the Levant. The Greeks 
of the mainland, when the feuds of Greek and 
Latin were still hot, used to speak of them sneer- 
ingly as " half-Franks." Geographical position 
and political circumstances have brought them 
into closer contact with the West than any other 
Greek-speaking population. Corfu has the char- 
acter of an Italian city. This is inevitable when 
we consider that it was ruled by Venice for four 
centuries, from 1386 to the fall of the Republic in 



THE ISLES 



57 



1797. But long ere this the Ionians had made 
acquaintance with the Franks. Robert Guiscard 
took Corfu in 1081, and his enterprise was not 
a mere raid, since he died in Cephalonia in 1085. 
In 1 146 the Normans of Sicily seized it. In 1179 
they conquered Cephalonia, Zante, and Ithaca. 
In 1 194 was established the County Palatine of 
Cephalonia, which included Cephalonia, Santa 
Maura, Zante, and Ithaca, under Count Matteo 
Orsini, who planted in them a strong colony of 
Apulians from Brindisi. This, transferred to the 
vigorous dynasty of the Tocchi, was maintained 
until 1479. Corfu in the meantime had been 
taken by the Genoese Vetrano in 1199, held by 
the Venetians from 1206 to 1214, when it suc- 
cumbed to the Despot of Epirus, who handed it 
over to Manfred of Sicily in 1259. In 1267 it fell 
to the Angevins of Naples, who ruled it until the 
death of Charles III, when the inhabitants sur- 
rendered it to Venice. In 1797 the Treaty of 
Campo Formio brought with it the French occu- 
pation. In 1800 was set up the Septinsular 
Republic under the patronage of autocratic 
Russia. In 1807 tne Treaty of Tilsit made the 
Ionian Islands a part of the Napoleonic Empire, 
and in 181 5 they were constituted an independent 
State under the exclusive protection of Great 
Britain. Finally they were incorporated into the 
Greek kingdom in 1864. Thus their history and 
the political and social influences brought to bear 
upon them differed widely from those of the rest 



58 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



of Greece. The Angevins firmly established the 
feudalism of the Normans, and the Venetians con- 
firmed it whilst suffering the baronies to lapse. 
They were lavish, however, in conferring patents 
of nobility. In 1672 no fewer than 112 noble 
families were inscribed in the Liber Aureus. 
They purposely kept the people ignorant, leaving 
them without schools, whilst they allowed the 
Ionian youth the privilege of taking their degrees 
at Padua without examination. Residence was 
compulsory, so that the wealthy class were 
Italianised with the minimum of education. But 
in spite of Italian influence, Hellenism, ever 
indomitable, asserted itself. The Turkish con- 
quest of Constantinople stimulated it by the 
influx of refugees. Thus came the Theotokis 
family, which is still in the front rank of in- 
tellectual Greece. Thus came Phrantzes, the 
historian. The revival of the Greek language 
had its fount in Corfu, and its sponsors were the 
ancestors of the Bulgaris and the Theotokis, who 
are prominent in contemporary Hellenic politics. 
The Ionians are the only Greeks who own an aris- 
tocracy, the creation of the Angevins and Venice. 
No titles are acknowledged in Greece, but they 
are still borne in the islands. Corfu is the only 
portion of the Greek dominions that was never 
under Turkish rule. Zante suffered it for a few 
years, from 1479 to 1482, Cephalonia for twelve 
years longer. Santa Maura has seen more of the 
Turks, who held it for two centuries, from 1479 



THE ISLES 



59 



until it was retaken by Morosini in 1685. But 
whilst the Greek mainland was subjected to fire 
and sword, the Ionian Islands enjoyed compara- 
tive peace, and with the advent of Great Britain 
they enjoyed representative government and free 
institutions before new Hellas arose. In 1848 
they were granted an extended suffrage and vote 
by ballot, a privilege for which England had to 
wait many years. Moreover, the Ionian Press 
was allowed a freedom greater than that of any 
country in Europe. The Ionian Republic pre- 
sented a remarkable contrast to its neighbours. 
Here was a State, endowed with free institutions, 
popular education, even-handed justice, an open 
market, good roads, and all the machinery of an 
advanced civilisation within sight of Albania, a 
land that was — and still is, for that matter — in 
a condition of primitive barbarism. It used its 
education, its Press, and its Parliament as a means 
of getting rid of those who had given it those 
advantages; but no Greek has ever been contented 
with alien rule, even though he knows he is better 
off under it. In race the Ionians are originally 
akin to the Epirotes with an admixture of the 
Toskhs of Southern Albania* Zante, depleted by 
Turkish raids, was largely repeopled by refugees 
from the Morea. There is, of course, a percentage 
of Italian blood, and the purest Hellenes are pro- 
bably to be found in Ithaca and Cephalonia. 
The latter island always showed the democratic 
tendencies of the Hellene, and was regarded as 



60 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



inferior to the others by the Venetians. To-day 
its population displays more enterprise than that 
of Corfu. Some of its sons have amassed great 
wealth, and to one of them, M. Vagliano, a 
London merchant, Athens is indebted for her 
noble public library. Cephalonia has also pre- 
served the traditions of the British period more 
than the others and has kept up the roads they 
made. This is perhaps owing in part to the 
administration of Sir Charles Napier, to Byron's 
sojourn before his last journey to Greece, and to 
the fact that English families dating from the 
occupation still reside on the island. Catching 
the western rains, the Ionians are the most fertile 
as they are the loveliest of the Greek isles. Zante 
is the richest. Land there is far more valuable 
than in any other part of Greece. Corfu is the 
most varied, and Ithaca the most romantic. 
Cerigo is no longer officially one of the group, 
from which indeed it is quite apart. It will be 
described elsewhere. 

As an example of the Ionian Islands it may be 
well to describe Ithaca, which is less subjected to 
foreign influence than Corfu, and therefore pre- 
sents a truer picture of Ionian life. Moreover, 
though not as familiar to the modern world as the 
larger islands, Ithaca has a far greater name, 
entwined as it is with an immortal story enshrined 
in undying verse. 



THE ISLES 



61 



ITHACA 

Steaming past the Echinades, the rugged islets 
so named from a fancied resemblance to sea- 
urchins, where Byron was storm-bound for three 
days on his way to the place where he was so soon 
to die, we come abreast of Ithaca, about twenty 
miles from the mainland. A mountainous mass, 
sharp-cut against the sky, "clear-seen" Ithaca — 
how apt is the Homeric epithet — shows a precipi- 
tous coast-line, seemingly harbourless. But hav- 
ing traversed about half its length, the boat turns 
into a previously hidden fiord which winds into 
the heart of the island. Indeed, it almost cuts it 
in two, leaving only an isthmus about half a mile 
across. We soon lose sight of the sea-line. 
Creeks on either hand afford glimpses of gleaming 
villages like those in the background of Leighton's 
classical subjects. Then we open a third creek 
to the left, narrow-throated, rock-bastioned, the 
shores clothed to the water's edge with juniper, 
wild olive, and oleander. From this strait pas- 
sage we come into an expanse of water, with an 
islet in the middle — an ideal mountain loch. At 
its head a horseshoe of white houses ; above 
them more white houses amid orange groves and 
vineyards ; and above these again, the grey and 
silver of olive trees wrestling with the limestone 
far up the steeps towards the rampart of toppling 
crags against the sky. This is Vathy, well named 
the Deep, for ships of great tonnage may lie close 



62 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



to the houses. The sea might be hundreds of 
miles away. There is not a suspicion of ' 'the 
mighty wave that ill winds roll without." It is 
one of the snuggest, and certainly one of the 
most beautiful harbours in the world. We land 
on a well-made quay, with an excellent roadway 
running round the port — a relic of the British 
occupation. 

An Englishman will not have much trouble 
in Ithaca with regard to language. English is 
almost as much the common tongue of the sea as 
French is of diplomacy, and the Ithacans, like 
the Companions of Ulysses, are seafarers. The 
Greeks are boatmen, but not as a rule deep-sea 
sailors. These latter only come from certain 
spots ; Andros is one, Ithaca is another, and the 
Ithacans have the genuine salt in their blood. 
The little island owns a goodly number of 
steamers. They come to Vathy once only, to 
be registered, then trade all over the world, but 
mainly to British ports. They are commanded, 
officered, and manned exclusively by Ithacans, 
who furnish more seamen than they require, and 
the surplus sail in British ships. But all are 
faithful to Ithaca, and between those who have 
retired and those who are having a spell ashore, 
there is always a contingent at Vathy who hail an 
Englishman with delight. They are familiar with 
him on the Thames, the Mersey, or the Hooghly. 
They have often met him on the Apollo Bunder 
at Bombay or the Circular Quay at Sydney, but 



THE ISLES 



63 



he is a rarity at Vathy, so they make much of 
him and try to make him feel at home. Their 
hospitality is rather embarrassing in one respect, 
for they conceive him to be tormented by an 
insatiable thirst, and it is a point of honour with 
them that he shall not be allowed to pay for any- 
thing. There are two things they insist on his 
seeing : one is the barber's shop, a wonderful 
museum of curios from all latitudes and longi- 
tudes, such as might have existed at Wapping or 
Rotherhithe when Dickens discovered London. 
The other is the burial-place of British soldiers — 
a small enclosure containing some twenty-five 
or thirty tombstones inscribed with the names and 
regiments of the dead. Among them are several 
children who were born and died here. There is 
a strange pathos in the thought that these English 
children lived their brief span in this remote 
islet, probably regarded by most of their country- 
men at home as belonging rather to the realm of 
fable than to the real world. Yet to these children 
Ithaca was the world and England a legend. 
They rest in one of the sweetest spots on earth, 
amid scenes of surpassing loveliness. The little 
graveyard is sheltered by tall cypresses and 
planted with myrtles and roses. Debonos, the 
shoemaker, who has charge of it, will tell you, 
with a touch of pride, as he hands you the key, 
that his father was cook to the officers' mess when 
redcoats were common objects at Vathy. It is a 
century since British soldiers came there and 



64 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



nearly half a century since they left, and it says 
very much for the Ithacans that the little cemetery 
should be so carefully tended after such a lapse of 
time, and in a place seldom visited by English- 
men. 

Besides the sailors, there is another class of 
Ithacans who speak English — the tongue we 
spoke in the days when we were not " smart" and 
had manners. These are the members of the old 
families — the Petalas, the Karavias, the Den- 
drinas, the Vrettos, the Dracouli — who were at 
school when the islands were under British pro- 
tection. Alas ! they are a very small and fast 
dwindling minority. Vestiges of a bygone era, 
they cherish an affection for the Ionian Republic 
whilst recognising the inevitable in the union 
with Greece. Mr. Petala hurried me off to see 
the house inhabited by Mr. Gladstone, a modest 
dwelling with a verandah on the quay. In front 
of it, on a pedestal, is a bust of High Commis- 
sioner Maitland, known to his contemporaries as 
" King Tom," from his arbitrary character, but a 
true friend to the Ionians. Ithaca owes to him its 
excellent roads. " Ah, we were somebody then," 
sighed Mr. Petala. On my first visit to Ithaca, 
some years ago, I had the privilege of meeting 
Mr. Dracoulis, then bordering on fourscore, and 
full of memories of Mr. Gladstone, whom he had 
known personally, and of the old days before him, 
when the Dracoulis family was one of the most 
distinguished in the islands. Like others of his 



THE ISLES 



65 



class, he had studied law at Padua, when that 
university was the Alma Mater of the Ionians. 
Mr. Platon Dracoulis, of Oxford, is his nephew, 
by the way. I shall never forget the courtly 
grace with which he lifted his hat when he men- 
tioned the name of Mr. Gladstone, who stands 
next to Ulysses in the estimation of the Ithacans. 
Some of them remember him ; all speak of him 
with reverence. 

As to Ulysses, there is no doubt in the Ithacan 
mind as to the identity of the Homeric Ithaca 
with the " narrow isle" of to-day. Though very 
few of them can read the Odyssey ) they know all 
about its hero. His name is a household word 
with them, and they show a united front against 
all who attempt to rob them of Odysseus. The 
controversy as to the Homeric sites is as old as 
Strabo, but the Ithacans reck little. So they sit 
outside the Cafe Odysseus on the quay at Vathy, 
and contemplate the mountain in front with the 
unalterable conviction that it is " Neriton, trem- 
bling with leaves," and that the mountain behind 
them is Neion. Ravens still croak on the Rock 
Korax. The fount where Eumaeus fed his swine 
still flows. In a creek of the Bay of Molo is the 
grotto of the Nymphs, where the Phaeacians left 
Odysseus / sleeping. Are not the cyclopaean 
walls on Eagle's Crag the remains of his palace? 
What cold-hearted archaeologist would grudge 
the Ithacans their hero ? After all, what other isle 
so well suits Homer's descriptions? His Ithake 



66 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



has preserved its name in spite of the Franks, who 
changed it to Val di Compare. It is true an awk- 
ward document stands in the way of their claim 
to direct descent from the subjects of Odysseus, in 
the shape of a decree of Venice, dated 1504, 
granting immunity from taxation for five years to 
settlers in Ithaca, which at the time was entirely 
deserted. These new settlers, who probably came 
from Cephalonia and were undoubtedly Greeks, 
are the progenitors of the present inhabitants. 
The latter got over the difficulty by asserting 
that when these seas were swept by corsairs their 
ancestors sought refuge elsewhere, and returned 
in a body at the first opportunity. That oppor- 
tunity occurred in 1504, and it is not easy to tra- 
verse the statement, for Ithaca has no mediaeval 
history like Athens and Achaia. From 1504 you 
plunge across thirty centuries to the heroic age. 
In any case this view of the matter satisfies the 
Ithacans, and not a house of these sea-wanderers 
but has a Penelope among its girls and a Tele- 
machus among its boys. 

The island is divided into four districts : Out- 
land in the north, Deep Bay in the south, and 
between them Highland (Anoge) and Eagle's 
Cliff in the narrow centre. Outland and Deep 
Bay are the most fertile. Eagle's Cliff, where 
Ithaca is half a mile wide, does not yield much, 
some grapes and olives, figs and quinces. The 
last time I was there it was a sweet December 
day ; the land was smothered with cyclamens and 



THE ISLES 



67 



a small and exquisite pale blue iris. We looked 
at the peacock-hued sea on either hand far below, 
down steeps all scarlet with the ripe berries of the 
arbutus. The goodman of the little farm was 
pruning his olives, Penelope was bringing water 
from the spring, a living caryatid, the amphora 
poised on her head, her hands busy with the 
spindle. Young Telemachus, with the limbs of 
an antique bronze, matted hair, and the merry 
brown face of a faun, was tending the goats, or 
feigning to do so, for he left his charges with 
alacrity to show us the way to the cyclopasan 
walls, leaping from rock to rock like a goat 
himself. No wonder the Ithacans are attached to 
their island. The stranger soon learns to love it 
too. The pellucid air, the limpid waters, the 
dream-like beauty of the landscape, every turn of 
the winding paths revealing new visions of rock 
and wood and sea, exercise a potent spell. And 
man, woman, or child, you may wander where 
you will without hindrance and without fear. The 
Ithacans deserve their reputation as the best of 
the Ionians. They are honest, truthful, and 
kindly, and they are not afflicted with that in- 
discreet curiosity universal among Greeks else- 
where. Only those who have travelled in Greek 
lands will appreciate the blessedness of this 
Ithacan virtue. They are open-handed in their 
hospitality. Fruit in season the stranger is not 
allowed to pay for, and seldom wine, outside the 
town. The peasant would be affronted who was 



68 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



tendered money for a draught of milk. " Come 
into our Paradeisos," said smiling Zoe on the 
day of our arrival at Vathy. As Zoe* was a maid 
of some twelve summers we hesitated. But 
parental authority stood at the gate smiling and 
beckoning, so into Zoe's Paradise we went, and 
did not escape therefrom until we had eaten of all 
it contained, and tasted the wine, and consented to 
carry off a basket of grapes. Yet Zoe and her 
friends had never set eyes on us before, nor were 
likely to do so again. On another occasion — it 
was winter this time and the oranges were ripe — 
we had paused a moment to admire an unusually 
fine crop, when out tripped Callirhoe, her dark 
eyes flashing sweetness, with a golden cluster 
wreathed in glossy leaves, fragrant, fresh culled 
from the bending bough. But this was not 
enough. Callirhoe insisted on filling our pockets. 
" Do you ever go anywhere near Cardiff? " said an 
Ithacan sea-captain on the day of our departure. 
u I shall be there on such a date and stay for so 
long a time. I shall have some of that wine 
on board, and there is always a bottle or two 
to spare if you care to take it ashore." The wine 
was of a much esteemed kind, made from currant 
grapes exposed three weeks to the sun, and it was 
ten years old. 

Sir Charles Napier, who once held office in 
Ithaca, wrote from the banks of the Indus that 
the Ithacans were the people among whom he 
had spent the most pleasant years of his life, and 



PEASANT'S DWELLING, ITHACA. 



THE ISLES 



69 



he always wished to return. There must be few 
who have known Ithaca who do not share that 
great soldier's desire. 

THE CYCLADES 

On a map of the ^Egean the Cyclades look like 
leaves scattered by a gale. The figure is apt, for 
they are in the full track of winds which sweep 
over them for more than half the year. British 
seamen who have had much experience of "the 
Arches," as they term the Archipelago, will 
testify that those seas are not by any means placid. 
Sheltered by the lofty barrier of Crete from the 
parching airs that come from the Sahara, they 
enjoy a climate more invigorating than that of 
neighbouring lands. But the mountains of the 
Greek mainland deny them the western rains, so 
copious in the Ionian Islands, so that with few 
exceptions their bare steeps nourish nothing but 
scanty herbage or at most low scrub, and the 
smaller ones are often naked rocks. The soft 
charm of Ithaca, the rich verdure of Zante, are 
lacking here. The beauty of the Cyclades is one 
of outline mainly, and it is perhaps at its highest 
in the witchery of moonlight. But at all times 
and under all aspects, this wonderful embroidery 
of isle and islet strewn over the "violet-eyed" 
waters casts a spell of enchantment over the be- 
holder. Such a region is naturally sparing of 
produce. Most of the islands barely sustain their 



70 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



inhabitants, who are of necessity frugal. This, 
combined with the stimulating air and tempera- 
ture, makes them a hardy race, industrious and 
given to enterprise. The large 10,000 and 12,000 
ton transatlantic liners of which Greece now 
boasts are not owned by continental Greeks, but 
by islanders of Andros, where there is quite a 
colony of shipowners, mostly related to each 
other. It is a community the like of which 
formerly existed in our own ports, consisting of 
men bred to the sea, who have sailed their own 
ships in their time, and whose sons do the same 
now. They dwell comfortably in houses with 
tiled roofs, rare in the Cyclades, where roofs are 
mostly flat, and many of them have a marble ship 
carved over their doors. In addition to the big 
liners, they have quite a fleet of "tramps," and 
the name " Androu " may be read on the stern of 
steamers in many a distant port. 

The history of the Cyclades, like that of the 
Ionian Islands, differs from that of the mainland 
of Greece no less in modern than in ancient 
times. They have seen more of the Frank and 
less of the Turk. In fact, some of them have 
hardly seen the Turk at all, for they have never 
had a resident Turkish population. The Duchy 
of the Archipelago, founded by Marco Sanudo in 
1207, lasted until 1566. But Frank rule did not 
end then, for the Gozzadini of Bologna, who 
governed the islands of Siphnos, Kythnos, and 
Kimolos for centuries, held their castle of Akro- 



THE ISLES 



71 



tiri in Santorin until 1617, and Venice did not 
relinquish Tenos until 17 18, when Athens had 
been Turkish for more than two and a half 
centuries. And in the islands the yoke was 
lighter. Naxos, Andros, Paros, and Tenos were 
allowed to retain their own laws and customs. 
Silk, wine, and food-stuffs remained free of duty 
as before. The capitation tax was low, and above 
all things they enjoyed immunity from the odious 
tribute of children. The Turks did not trouble 
them so long as the taxes were paid, and once a 
year sent a commissioner to receive them. Greek 
and Latin hated each other more than they hated 
the Turk. The Bey during his short annual 
sojourn had to listen to mutual accusations and 
recriminations, to which, no doubt, he gave little 
heed so long as the tribute was forthcoming. 
There was never any love lost between the haughty 
Latins with their aristocratic prejudices and the 
democratic Greeks. The latter invited the Turks 
both to Naxos and Andros. They regretted it 
when the Jew, Joseph Nasi, was made Duke of 
Naxos. Suleiman the Magnificent had been 
succeeded by Selim the Sot. That egregious 
potentate gave the island duchy to his boon 
companion. Nasi never visited the islands, but 
governed them by deputy. Nevertheless he re- 
mained Duke of Naxos until his death in 1579. 
Whatever grievances they might have against the 
Latins, this was too much for a people who, when 
they had occasion to mention a Jew in conversa- 



72 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



tion, apologised to their interlocutor as though 
they uttered something unclean ; so the Greeks 
tried to get back their old rulers, but in vain. 
The islands were henceforth Turkish. During 
the War of Independence, when the Greeks were 
struggling for freedom, Latin sympathies were 
with the Turks, who two hundred and fifty years 
before had ousted them from their possessions at 
the instance of the Greeks. But the old feud has 
died out : Latin and Greek have intermarried. 
Greek is the common tongue of both, and the 
irrepressible Hellenic nationality has triumphed 
as elsewhere. There is little to distinguish the 
Latin of to-day from his Greek fellow-countryman. 
His name, it is true, attests his lineage. His 
greater polish and his use of the French tongue 
are due to the care of his Church. It is the Latin 
Church that holds together the Latins as a distinct 
social entity. Unlike the Italians of the Ionian 
Islands, the Latin of the Cyclades has generally 
been faithful to his creed. But still there is a 
leakage, and among the Orthodox Greeks of 
Naxos, Santorin, Tenos, and Andros there is a 
percentage of Latin blood, Italian, French, or 
Catalan. The process of absorption and assimila- 
tion is going on. 

The stranger to the Cyclades, with a mind bent 
on the myths of Hellas and the splendours of 
antiquity, is not prepared for the tinge of mediaeval 
romance imparted by the ruined castles, which 
speak of a picturesque phase of history. Scaros 



THE ISLES 



73 



on the spur of a red crag at Santorin, the castle 
of Andros on a rock in the harbour joined to the 
land by a high-flung arch, those of Melos and 
Siphnos, that of Amorgos which displays the 
successive work of Hellene, Roman, and Frank, 
were built by the feudal barons, who came to 
better their fortunes as Englishmen go to a new 
colony. Sometimes they paid allegiance to the 
Duchy of Naxos, sometimes they threw it off, 
according to mood and opportunity. The Dukes 
of Naxos were great personages, held in high 
esteem both in Venice and at the Vatican. One 
of them, Giovanni I, came to England in 1404 to 
seek aid from Henry IV against the Infidel. 1 But 
as the Duchy outlasted the short-lived Latin 
Empire of the East from which it sprang, the 
baronies outlasted the Duchy. Their history is 
full of incident, of plot and passion. They were 
not particular as to how they obtained their ends. 
Pioneers seldom are. But in the presence of their 
strongholds they are very real personages. 2 

1 Henry IV always cherished the idea of a new crusade. 
Shakespeare indulged in no poetic licence in putting into his 
mouth the words "We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land." 
Henry V inherited the desire. As he lay dying, he stopped the 
clergy who were reciting the penitential psalms at the words 
"Walls of Jerusalem," and solemnly declared that had he been 
spared, it was his steadfast purpose to have won back the Holy 
City for Christendom. He had sent Gilbert de Lannoy to report 
on the country, with a view to a campaign. 

2 In Miller's Latins of the Levant there is an amusing passage 
referring to the genealogical pretensions of these nobles. The 
Quirini claimed kinship with the Roman Emperor Galba. The 
Sanudi traced back to Livy. The Crispi, not to be outdone, 



74 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



There is one alien element in the Cyclades, not 
a large one. The northern half of Andros is 
Albanian. In the fifteenth century the population 
of the island was reduced, by the raids of corsairs, 
to about a thousand. It was then, probably, that 
the Albanians came and repeopled it. They pre- 
serve their language and customs, and, unlike the 
Latins, are not being assimilated, though prac- 
tically they are Greek. With this exception, and 
that of the Latins, the Cyclades folk are Hellenes 
of a purer strain than perhaps any other Greek- 
speaking population, in spite of the scourge of 
piracy and the ravages of Barbarossa in the 
sixteenth century. 

The distinctive dress is fast disappearing, though 
the vrachoi, the baggy breeches, are pretty general 
still among the older men. The skoupkia, the 
red knitted cap hanging down on one side, is 
becoming rarer every day. The women's costume 
is going faster than that of the men. Formerly 
each island had its peculiarity, especially in the 
head-dress. The kourli, a coloured kerchief 
thrown over a ring of false curls, may be seen 
occasionally. At Siphnos the pina exists, a high 
cap adorned with embroidery, but it is kept rather 
as a curiosity than for use ; and at Amorgos some 
ancient dame may still wear the toztrlos, a cushion 
on the top of the head and another behind, bound 

cited Sallust as " the author of our race." But the most joyous 
effort in this direction was that of the Venieri, who based their 
claim to Kythera, the isle of Venus, on their alleged descent from 
the goddess. 



THE ISLES 



75 



about in a complicated way with kerchiefs, one 
coming over the forehead and another swathing 
the mouth. The kuklos of Anaphi is a high 
wedge-shaped cap over which a kerchief is thrown 
covering the shoulders. But costumes are kept 
in cupboards to be shown, like old lace and 
brocade. They are no longer a part of the daily 
life. Happily the distaff and loom are not banished, 
and in most of the islands the women make all 
their household linen. In some all clothing is 
spun and woven at home. There is an excellent 
homespun, tawny in hue, dyed in the refuse of 
the winepress. The shepherds wear this, and flat 
sandals of undressed ox-hide fastened by thongs. 
The shepherds of Hesiod's day were probably 
shod in a similar way. The ancient world is still 
with us in the implements of husbandry — the two- 
pronged hoe, the plough fashioned from the 
branch of a tree, which the ploughman carries 
slung on his back to and from the field — and the 
winepress in the vineyard. The huge earthenware 
jars for wine and oil, and the useful goatskin 
bag, closed by thongs drawn through a bone, are 
also survivals of a distant past. Panpipes still 
delight the rustic ear, and so do the bagpipes — 
a rude contrivance of a goatskin and reeds, to 
which is sometimes added a cow's horn. A small 
lute, the lineal descendant of the lyre, may be met 
with in some localities. But the guitar has largely 
replaced these. 

Some islands were formerly rich in old furniture, 



76 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



relics of the Latin times. But these are now rare. 
The dealer has laid his devastating hand on the 
Cyclades and has no doubt secured excellent bar- 
gains. The people are now aware of the market 
value of these things. I asked a man in Naxos 
what he wanted for a carved triptych of Gothic 
design, apparently of Spanish origin. He replied, 
£50. Probably this price was not excessive, but 
formerly it would have been obtained for £5. 
Siphnos, long under the rule of the Catalan Da 
Corogna, was once full of old Spanish furniture, 
but it is doubtful if it now possesses a single 
piece. Myconos, too, has been cleared of its 
abundant vestiges. Among the old Latin families 
of Naxos, Santorin, and Andros there may lurk 
here and there a coffer, a mirror, a chandelier, 
or perhaps a precious fragment of lace, Venetian 
or old Greek point. In distant Amorgos, where 
there are now no Latins, one may occasionally 
come across a Venetian glass or plate in a humble 
household, preserved, notwithstanding its fragile 
character, from the days when the island was held 
by the Quirini. Things of a more durable nature 
— metal-work and brocades — which I was told were 
once plentiful, have disappeared. 

Almost every island is reputed for some dainty 
article of food. Kythnos still boasts of the loose 
crumbling cheese packed in jars for which it was 
famed in antiquity. The people say its flavour is 
due to the quality of the pasturage. The soft 
unsalted cheese called mysethra, and usually eaten 



THE ISLES 



77 



with honey, is a delicacy consumed all over 
Greece ; but the mysethra of Ios excels all others. 
It is made from boiled sheep's milk, strained and 
pressed into a rush-basket in shape and size like a 
jelly mould. The natives of Ios also attribute its 
quality to the herbage of the island. Tenos is 
noted for its barley-cakes. Chick-peas boiled and 
pounded are mixed with the leaven in the propor- 
tion of a tenth to the barley-meal. This partly 
accounts for the excellence of the cakes, but the 
Teniotes maintain that there is a trick in the 
baking known only to themselves. Andros is 
supreme in sweets, notably one of small green 
bergamot lemons preserved whole, and a seductive 
cake made of walnuts and honey. It has also a 
speciality in mouroraki, a spirit distilled from 
mulberries. The cheese-cakes — tyropita, of San- 
torin — are not those dear to the youth of England. 
They are a compound of cheese, eggs, curdled 
milk, saffron, and certain spices, much relished in 
Santorin, but the alien palate needs education to 
appreciate them. The loukoumi of Syra is not 
a Greek confection, but a Turkish one, as its name 
attests. It was brought to Syra by refugees from 
Scio, and is flavoured by the mastic which is a 
special product of that Asiatic isle. 

Wine is a universal product in the Cyclades, 
but it is an article of export on three islands only. 
Santorin, both in quantity and quality, far excels 
the others. Zea sends wine to the Greek main- 
land, and Paros likewise, though in smaller 



78 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



quantity. Andros and Tenos both grow wheat. 
Naxos has a speciality in citrons, a noble fruit 
of extraordinary size, which would be prized in 
England for its decorative character. The bulk 
of Naxos citrons come to England, but not in 
their natural state. They are packed in barrels 
in brine, to be converted into candied peel. 
Naxos also raises cattle, and supplies Athens with 
veal. Andros exports the lemons for which it is 
famous, and Tenos olives. Zea in addition to 
wine has a large export trade of acorns, or rather 
the cups of acorns, for tanning purposes. The 
mineral products of the islands are emery in 
Naxos, puzzolana in Santorin, salt, sulphur, and 
millstones in Melos, and marble in Paros, where 
the fine-grained statuary marble used by Phidias 
and Praxiteles is still quarried. 

The Cyclades present a great variety, both in 
natural features and in the customs of the people. 
In this respect island differs from island in a 
remarkable way. Beautiful Zea — or Keos, as it is 
now once again called, as in classical days — is 
singular among these generally treeless isles in 
the oaks which abound in it. There are said 
to be about two millions of them. They are 
valuable property on account of the trade in acorn- 
cups, and almost every inhabitant owns a few. 
Some of them are of great size, and give the land- 
scape the aspect of an English park. Very 
different in appearance is Melos with its bare 
mountains, yet it has a land-locked harbour which 



THE ISLES 



79 



could contain the world's navies. Forlorn and 
deserted now, it was busy in the days of sailing- 
ships. The French, especially, took the Melian 
pilots, and it was owing to the energy of the 
French Consul in 1820 that the Venus of Milo 
is now in the Louvre. Melos has furnished 
another superb example of Greek art. The 
Poseidon now at Athens was discovered by a man 
planting orange trees. But the island was the 
home of a far more ancient civilisation, as proved 
by the pre-Mycenasan remains excavated by the 
British School at Phylakopi. The people are of 
an interesting type, many of them with fair hair 
and dark eyes. Seriphos is a mineral island, 
exporting iron-ore, but its vineyards are its great 
feature. Special church services usher in the 
vintage. The people have some peculiar customs. 
The planting of a vineyard is done in common : 
all neighbours help. There is a symposium after- 
wards. Every operation of husbandry — even the 
sharpening of tools — is made an excuse for feast- 
ing. Kimolos, which sends fuller's-earth to 
Athens, was formerly a pirate's lair. Some of the 
people inhabit ancient tombs hewn in the rock. 
Siphnos is a picturesque island, with its capital 
Apollonia on a breezy cliff high above the sea. 
As in ancient times, Siphnos is noted for its 
potters. There is not work enough for them in 
the island, so they travel all over Greece, and 
settle in town or village until they have supplied 
it. Ios, with a snug harbour and a clean little 



80 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



capital on a hill, in lieu of trees has a forest 
of windmills and churches. The latter are small, 
it is true, but there are nearly 400 of them 
for a population of 2200. The Ios folk are not 
more pious than the other islanders. They owe 
their wealth of churches to the Venetians. 
Sikinos, one of the smallest of the inhabited 
islands, has a steep northern face, but slopes 
gently to the south and produces wheat and fruit. 
Man has made it his home for many ages, for a 
temple of Apollo of the second century B.C. 
is now used as a church. Pholygandros has a 
grand coast-line of sheer cliffs some 1800 feet 
high. It has a population of about 1000, and in- 
scriptions show that it has been inhabited from 
ancient times. Amorgos, a long ribbon of moun- 
tain, precipitous and deeply indented, looks across 
to Asia, and is a sort of outpost of the Cyclades. 
Its remote situation has caused the inhabitants — 
there are about 5000 of them — to retain old beliefs 
and old customs to a greater extent than those 
of some of the islands. Piracy lingered longer 
there than in most places. There are no pirates 
now. Adventurous spirits go to America instead, 
and keep confectioners' shops or become cooks. 
So it happened that in this rather obscure isle we 
met a native talking English — with a twang. 
We also ate lobsters, a speciality of Amorgos, 
for a ridiculously small sum. Amorgos is rich in 
remains, both antique and mediaeval. The vaulted 
tombs, tholaria, are used as stores or stables. 



THE ISLES 



81 



There is a temple of Apollo, a gymnasium, and a 
stadium on the site of ancient Minoa. There are 
Hellenic towers, a baronial castle, and a great 
convent overhanging a frightful precipice. The 
island is wildly picturesque from end to end. 

Still more remote than Amorgos is the lonely 
isle of Anaphe, situated east of Santorin, away 
from the rest of the Cyclades. It has no regular 
means of communication with the world outside, 
but it supplies the wants of its population of about 
one thousand souls without external aid. Tobacco 
is, I believe, the only thing it imports. Like 
Iceland, it rejoices in the absence of snakes. On 
the other hand, it abounds in partridges, and 
toujours perdrix is literally true of Anaphiote 
tables. Inscriptions, tombs, vases, and statuary 
bear witness to the culture and wealth of its 
antique inhabitants. The monastery of Our Lady 
of the Reeds is on the site of a temple of Apollo, 
who dropped Anaphe here to serve as a refuge 
for the Argonauts. The Anaphiotes alone among 
the islanders have a quarter to themselves at 
Athens. High up the steep northern face of the 
Acropolis, overlooking the city, is Anaphiotika, 
and its houses, whitewashed and flat-roofed, pre- 
serve the island character, and are in conspicuous 
contrast to the sloping tiled Athenian roofs. 

Paros, the marble island which gave birth to 
the sculptor Scopas, now once more extracts the 
materials he employed from the flanks of Mount 
Marpessa. Paroikia, the chief town, is largely 

G 



82 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



made up of antique remains. There is scarcely 
a house but displays fragments of sculptured 
marble. A ruined tower is built of drums of 
columns and the gradines of a theatre. The great 
church has a pagan altar beneath the Christian 
one, and the principal portal is flanked by marble 
satyrs. Judging from the numbers of ancient 
cemeteries, Paros must formerly have had a much 
larger population than the nine thousand it now 
contains. Antiparos, separated from it by a 
narrow channel, is remarkable only for its vast 
stalactitic cavern. Both islands are bleak in 
aspect, though Paros has vast vineyards. 

Pleasant to behold are Andros and Tenos, and 
as they are in the track of steamers passing be- 
tween the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles, 
travellers not bound for the Cyclades see more of 
them than of other islands. Both are well wooded, 
and Andros especially is copiously watered. They 
are fertile and populous : Tenos has 12,500 souls 
and Andros 19,000, the largest population of 
any single member of the group. After Syra, 
it is also the wealthiest. Mention has been made 
of its shipowners ; there are also many well-to-do 
tillers of the soil. As neither island has practi- 
cally seen anything of the Turks — Tenos was 
Venetian until 17 18 — their character is Western 
rather than Oriental. The architecture is Italian. 
Andros is studded with square Venetian towers, 
still used as dwellings. The stables are on the 
ground-floor, the living-rooms above, and the 



THE ISLES 



83 



dovecote on the top. In Tenos the dovecote is 
attached to the apotheeke, a building away from 
the dwelling, among the vineyards. In it the 
farmer stores his wine and honey and oil : there 
he keeps his implements and a still for making 
raki. Attached to the apotheeke is, in most cases, 
a little private chapel. Both islands produce a 
variety of fruit, but Tenos is noted for its grapes 
and Andros for its lemons. Menetes, a summer 
resort of the wealthier Andriotes, is a charming 
village amid lemon groves and purling streams 
and banks tapestried with fern. The Latins in 
both islands are provided with churches and 
schools. In Tenos there is a good convent school 
for girls. In Exoburgo, Tenos possesses what is 
perhaps a unique example of a mediaeval town 
and fortress, now abandoned and ruinous. Andros 
has a speciality in cooks and Tenos in nurses. 
Both go in large numbers to Athens and Constan- 
tinople, especially the latter, where they are 
familiar figures. And whilst Tenioties and An- 
driotes are more generally known outside the 
Cyclades than the denizens of other islands, 
Tenos is the only island known to Greeks of 
other regions. Twice a year from the mainlands 
of Europe and Asia, from islands near and far, 
they flock in their thousands to Tenos to the 
great Panagyris, the festival of the Virgin. This 
will be treated of in another place. It suffices 
here to note that this Pan-Hellenic gathering 
gives to Tenos in some sort the position held of 



84 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



old by Delos, as the religious centre of Hellas. 
And as the cult of Apollo was the bond that held 
together the Confederacy of Delos, so the cult of 
the Panagia at Tenos has had a share in the 
revival of Hellenic nationality. 

Well within sight of Tenos is the group of 
small islands, Myconos, Rheneia, and between 
them, the tiniest of the three, a mere speck of 
land without a tree, Delos, the most famous of the 
Cyclades, the birthplace of Apollo, not only the 
religious but the political centre of the JEgean, 
to which embassies came from all Hellas, into 
which wealth flowed from every side — deserted 
now save for the two guardians who are there to 
guard the vestiges of its greatness. You begin 
to see Delos at Myconos, not only in its museum. 
The houses, which show traces of the days of the 
Italian Duchy, also show many of a remoter date, 
for Delos was a handy quarry. When we see 
these things in the neighbourhood of every antique 
site, and when we know how much that is precious 
has gone into the limekiln, we are not disposed to 
gird at Lord Elgin and his kind, but rather to be 
thankful to them. When the writer saw the frag- 
ments of the colossal statue dedicated to Apollo 
by the Naxians strewing the soil of Delos, he was 
glad to think that one foot at least was safe in the 
great treasure-house in Bloomsbury. Delos is a 
desolation of marble, brightened in spring by a 
carpet of many-hued flowers. The view from 
the hill Cynthos is very fine, and helps one to 



THE ISLES 



85 



realise the central position of the favoured isle. 
Naxos and Paros rise from the deep blue waters 
on one hand, Tenos and Andros on the other. 
In the south-west Siphnos and Seriphos and more 
distant Keos, and in the west, much nearer, is 
Syra, the successor of Delos, the capital and 
administrative centre of the Cyclades. 

In 1825 Luke Ralli, with the consent of his 
fellow-refugees from Scio, named their new settle- 
ment Hermoupolis, from the name of the ship 
Hermes, in which they had arrived three years 
before. In the same year, 1825, the first two- 
storeyed house was built. They had lived in huts 
before. That was the beginning of modern Syra. 
Hermoupolis speedily became the largest city in 
the Greek dominions. Athens and Piraeus have 
outstripped it since, but it still compares favourably 
with either in some respects. It is far cleaner than 
the latter and better drained than the former. It is 
the only place in the Cyclades that has horses and 
carriages. It has a university, well-equipped 
schools, an elegant theatre, well-stocked shops, 
handsome private houses, a very fine square paved 
with marble, engineering works, and dry docks. 
It is a centre of the Eastern Telegraph Company; 
all the great lines of steamers call there ; it is in 
daily communication with Greece and the other 
islands, and in almost daily communication with 
Constantinople on the one hand and Western 
Europe on the other. The refugees, who were 
survivors of the massacre of Scio, were mostly 



86 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



from that island ; some were from Psara, and others 
from Crete. They went first to Tenos and were 
badly received. They tried Zea and were turned 
away. Then they came to Syra, inhabited by a 
few Latins under French protection, a crag and 
little more, and they made it what it is, the 
wealthiest and most cultured island in the ^Egean; 
Tenos and Zea, through their churlishness or 
timidity, lost more than they knew. Syra is a 
monument to Greek vitality, and it is noteworthy 
that it was created by Greeks of Asia. Hermou- 
polis with its 18,700 inhabitants has no water. 
All has to be brought from afar, yet its streets are 
kept clean and well watered. It is characteristic 
that Syra, arid and scant of irrigation, supplies 
Athens with early vegetables. The town runs up 
the steep slope, a white heap of houses very con- 
spicuous and striking from the sea. The old 
Latin town is at the top, with its old church of St. 
George, which has a rival now in a large Greek 
church. But the little church of the Transfigura- 
tion down by the shore is dearer to the Syriotes 
than their big cathedral. It was built before they 
built their first two-storeyed house, and in its nave 
in 1825 Luke Ralli — a name well known in England 
and in India — first named the new settlement 
Hermoupolis. 

Within sight of bright and busy Syra is Gyaros, 
its antithesis. The smallest of the Cyclades, it has 
two wells and four inhabitants. There are smaller 
islands to which shepherds resort at certain seasons 



THE ISLES 



8? 



to pasture their flocks, but the diminutive popula- 
tion of Gyaros is permanent. The island — it was 
a place of banishment under the Roman Empire — 
is leased from the municipality of Syra. 

This completes the tale of the Cyclades save 
two, and they have been reserved for more detailed 
treatment in the form of a narration of personal 
experiences. This, the writer hopes, will convey 
a more vivid notion of the places and those who 
dwell in them than a general description. It would 
have been impossible to do the like by all the 
islands, but the two chosen present features of 
unusual interest, whilst differing totally in charac- 
ter. Naxos well deserves the title of " Pearl of 
the Cyclades " for its natural beauty, and it is 
steeped in an atmosphere of romance both by 
myth and authentic history. Santorin fascinates 
by its strange and somewhat terrible physical 
conditions, and by the extraordinary environment 
in which man has continued to dwell on it from a 
period beyond the range of history. 

NAXOS 

The largest and fairest of the Cyclades, once 
their queen, has become a sort of Cinderella 
among her sisters. The people of the other 
islands gave us scant encouragement when we 
spoke of going there. It was a dull place, the 
inhabitants were surly and thievish, there was no 
accommodation, even the climate was denounced — 



88 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



the island was a sort of cave of ^Eolus, lashed by 
frequent storms. Our first try failed. We ran by 
in a gale of wind, for Naxos has no harbour, 
which no doubt accounts in a large measure for 
its aloofness. Three days later, however, to our 
satisfaction, we were speeding from the ship's side 
towards a cone-like pile of white houses on a hill- 
side. This was Naxia, the capital. On a low 
islet, almost touching the shore, stood a marble 
portal, a stately ruin which was at once recog- 
nised from Tournefort's drawing in the Voyage du 
Levant. It bore witness to the old traveller's 
accuracy as well as to the unchanged conditions 
since he came to Naxos two hundred years ago. 
The no-accommodation spectre was quickly laid. 
Within half an hour we were installed in a couple 
of spacious rooms, from which we looked down 
on the steep town and across a purple strip of sea 
to the bare slopes of Paros. Our salon was vast, 
a place to wander in, sparse as to furniture, but 
there was a triptych they would be glad to have 
at South Kensington. The place was spotlessly 
clean. Despoina, the daughter of the house, who 
waited on us, had soft, liquid eyes, but was a 
hawk in detecting a speck of matter in the wrong 
place. The bed-linen was of the finest, and fra- 
grant of lavender. We paid about two shillings 
a day for this. Behind our dwelling rose the 
crenellated walls of a thirteenth-century fortress. 
A litter of broken marble at its base was puzzling, 
but on looking up I understood. The face of our 



THE ISLES 



89 



grey strongholds of the north was there but not 
the complexion. This was half marble — a mili- 
tary work planned on mediaeval lines, but of 
substance rifled from the structures of antiquity. 
The strewn fragments represented surplus material 
left by the builders. It was an astounding spec- 
tacle, but there was more in store for us. We 
soon discovered that the streets — narrow alleys 
they are in reality — were paved with statuary 
marble. The exterior stairways leading to the 
upper storeys of the houses are made of massive 
blocks of it. Lintel, threshold, door-jamb, and 
window-sill are contributions from the same 
source. Plinth and column, frieze and cornice, 
and chunks of mutilated statues have all stood 
the makers of Naxia in good stead. Here and 
there, wedged into the framework of a crazy 
tenement, are bits of delicate carving, wrought 
by hands that have been dust for more than 
twenty centuries. Historical notices of Naxos 
are scant during the Hellenic period, and almost 
disappear after its revolt from the Confederacy of 
Delos in 471 B.C. ; but here was evidence of the 
former existence of a noble city whose vestiges 
have served as a quarry for many a barbarous 
generation. Modern Naxia is an odd jumble of 
the mean squalor of to-day with the splendour 
of a forgotten age. 

I went across to the islet, only a few yards from 
the shore, to which it was once joined by a mole 
now ruined. The Naxiotes call it Palati on no 



90 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



grounds save a tradition of a palace on the site. 
Neither is there any reason, beyond that of local 
association, for assuming it to have been a temple 
of Dionysos. I made out the remains of a cella 
about eighty feet long, and there is little doubt 
that it was a temple of some sort. The noble 
doorway, twenty-one feet high, twelve feet wide, 
is constructed of three huge blocks. The large- 
grained Naxian marble is highly micaceous, and 
glistened in the January sun, looking as snowy as 
if newly wrought. Doubtless its ponderous char- 
acter saved it. Naught else remained save chunks 
of marble, white and green and rose, and chips 
of diaphanous alabaster. The surface of the islet 
was literally covered with them. The edifice must 
have been of a sumptuous character. Some of it 
I had probably seen, coming through the town, 
in the shape of doorsteps, whitewashed ; for the 
Naxiote housewife, on the principle of painting 
the lily, carefully applies a coat of that mixture to 
her marble once a week. 

As you thread the narrow alleys of Naxia, be- 
tween bulging walls that threaten catastrophe, 
shored up by relics of nobler buildings, the work 
of a race that has perished, you are depressed by 
the decrepitude of the present and the shadow of 
a magnificent past. You climb at last to a point 
where a third feature confronts you, and an un- 
expected one. Grim bastions frown overhead, 
and beneath pointed arches and groined vault- 
ings you pass into a region which breathes the 



THE ISLES 



91 



sturdiness of mediaeval Europe. This is the 
castro — the fortress that crowns the hill. The 
castro is an imperium in imperio. Within it 
dwell the Latins, a relic, like it, of the Middle 
Ages, witnessing to a page of history that is 
closed. It was startling in an eastern isle to hear 
the Latin Office, to see the familiar surplice of 
the Church of the West. The little cathedral, 
with its chapter of six canons, endowed by Marco 
Sanudo in 1207, nas survived the onslaughts of 
corsairs, the rapine of Barbarossa, and the machi- 
nations of the Greeks. Its five cupolas — the 
Venetian builders were evidently inspired by 
St. Mark's — are surmounted by slender antique 
columns. The effect is grotesque, but the 
Church had her share in the spoils of the 
ancients. Within we found Gothic tombs dating 
from the Ducal days. The canons belong to the 
old Latin families, and derive their revenue from 
lands held by the chapter. Here, in their 
cathedral, the Latins are baptised and married, 
and here the Burial Office is read over them. 
But the educational work is in the hands of 
foreign clergy. French Lazarists conduct a boys' 
school, French Ursuline nuns a girls' school. 
The popular and most frequented church is that 
of the Capuchins, who are Italians. The canons 
confine themselves to their capitular duties. The 
two French schools are well staffed and equipped, 
and draw their pupils from the Latin population 
all over the Levant. The children get a sound 



92 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



education, and acquire a refinement it would be 
impossible to find elsewhere. The Latins all 
speak French, the Greeks rarely, so that the 
traveller comes into closer touch with the former 
than the latter. 

The streets within the castro are more spacious, 
the houses more stately, than those of the Greek 
town. In a Greek land, where titles of nobility 
and armorial bearings are unknown, one is struck 
by the carved escutcheons over many of the door- 
ways. But on shield and lozenge, charged with 
the devices of families once famous, Ichabod is 
writ large. The families have not all disappeared : 
there are still representatives of the De Cigallas, 
the Veniers, the Lasticqs, the Sommanpa, the 
Delia Rocca, the Barozzi, and other names for- 
merly illustrious. But property is rarer than 
patents of nobility. The latter are carefully pre- 
served, however, and some of them show a lineage 
beside which more than half the House of Lords 
would he parvenu. 

The Duchy of Naxos and the Archipelago came 
to an end in 1566, after an existence of three 
hundred and sixty years. Perhaps it deserved its 
fate. Venetian rule was notoriously selfish, and 
Venice, if she got her tribute from those to whom 
she granted fiefs, cared naught about the manner 
in which it was obtained. The Sanudi and the 
Crispi abominably misused the power entrusted 
to them. Their government was a system of 
rapine. Property was arbitrarily confiscated, 



THE ISLES 



93 



lands were siezed, and the population reduced to 
a condition little better than that of serfs. The 
last of the Dukes was a mere voluptuary ; the 
nobility were dissolute and impoverished ; the 
immorality of the clergy was flagrant and open ; 
the judicature was corrupt. Such a state was 
ripe for the heel of the Ottoman. The Greeks, 
maddened by oppression, scandalised by the 
manners of the Court, sent two of their number 
to Constantinople to ask the Sultan to give them 
a new ruler. Contemporary travellers afford a 
glimpse of the gaieties of Naxos and Paros, 
"places of much diversion." They tell us of 
" festivities and balls in which there was no lack 
of polished and gracious ladies." So the Latins 
danced to the end, and, truth to tell, the Naxiotes 
were better off, even under the Turk. Yet here, 
in the castro, one could not help feeling some 
tenderness for this remnant of the last great fief of 
the Latin Empire of the East. The vestiges are not 
of stone only. Look at the fair hair and blue 
eyes of the children. This little maiden, of the 
frank gaze, smiles welcome to the Western 
stranger as she trips down the marble stairway. 
For she is of the West too, and blood is thicker 
than water. These women, gravely gracious, 
these men, reserved but courteous, seem to have 
dropped out of old and knightly Europe into an 
alien atmosphere. Mien and manner form a 
stronger line of demarcation between the Greek 
and Latin towns than the walls of the castro. 



94 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



The poorer folk have made their homes in 
the fortress itself. The familv washing hangs out of 
tower and jutting bartizan. The effect is bizarre, 
but its humour is tempered by its pathos. Through 
the open doorways of the larger houses, with their 
mouldering escutcheons and air of faded splen- 
dour, one has fleeting visions of ladies. Marianas, 
these sad, silent ladies, but Marianas expectant of 
nothing. Their red-gold hair, lit by the stray 
sunbeam that ventures falteringly into those long, 
dim chambers, might belong to a canvas of 
Titian or Giorgione. They are of a day that 
is dead. The twilight of that day casts its shade 
over everything in the castro, yet in its stagnation 
and decay there is a forlorn charm that grows 
upon us. Its denizens are not as they were in the 
time of Tournefort, who visited them in 1700, and 
says: " On n'entend parler que d'arbres de genea- 
logie. " The family trees are preserved, but they do 
not talk about them. Nevertheless they are gentle 
still, and I hold in grateful remembrance many 
a little act of kindly courtesy. There are about 
four hundred of them left, and they are dwindling. 
Our favourite haunt was what may be termed the 
cathedral close, surrounded by quaint dwellings 
tapestried with clematis and passion-flower. Here 
we came of an afternoon and heard the canons 
droning the Office, or later — when the purple 
shadows ate up the gold on the embattled walls — 
listened to the ringing of the Angelus, wondering 
the while how far off was the day that it would be 



THE ISLES 



95 



hushed, when the last of the Latins had dis- 
appeared from what has been their home for seven 
centuries. 

We were told there was an archaic statue lying 
on a hill-side near Flerio, a few miles from Naxia, 
and started to look for it. The first mile was on 
a level sandy road bordered by tall aloes and 
occasional palms. Rounding a spur and follow- 
ing the pebbly bed of an oleander-fringed stream, 
we came into a mountain-girdled valley — a bowl- 
like hollow of tender green, dotted with grey 
rocks. Gorges stretched shadowy fingers into 
the hills, and high up in one of them gleamed the 
white village of Melanes embedded in foliage. 
This, as we approached, was lit up by innumerable 
dots of gold. The oranges were ripe for harvest. 
There was nothing to see in Melanes save a Vene- 
tian tower. Beyond, the path grew more uneven. 
The ravine bubbled with springs and was vocal 
with rills. The rocks were draped with ferns, 
maidenhair predominating, and crowned by the 
uncouth cactus which bears the prickly pear. Fig 
trees sprouted out of crevice and cranny, often 
meeting in an arch overhead. The path became 
the dry bed of a watercourse of pure white marble, 
carved and polished into curious shapes by the 
rains, and we discovered that we were scrambling 
up a hill of solid marble. Ancient dames, plying 
distaff and spindle, came out of tumble-down 
hovels to gaze at us. But the hovels were of 
marble. The novelty wore off in a day or two. 



96 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



The dry-stone walls of garden and orchard are 
piled-up lumps of the glistening saccharoid marble 
of which half the island seems to be made. Over 
the head of the gorge a stream tumbled in a 
series of cascades. On the level above, it slid 
placidly between whispering reeds, alive with 
little tortoises. Here was a shepherd-boy clad 
in sheepskin, carrying his crook. We asked him 
about the agalma, and we asked everybody we 
met. An agalma there seemed to be, but we 
could learn nothing definite as to its whereabouts, 
and we had to return without a sight of that statue. 
But we had seen what Naxos was like. The 
melancholy of the town vanished in the laughing 
sunshine outside. We trod a carpet of crocus 
and anemone. Tall asphodels and acanthus grew 
everywhere. The mountains, scarce higher than 
those of our own Lakeland, were in form and 
colour the peaked backgrounds of the early 
Italian masters. We forgot the Latins and the 
castro, and thought of Ariadne, of Dionysos, and 
the nymph Coronis. Yonder soaring peak still 
bears her name. The vine and the ivy of Diony- 
sos were all around us — ivy we had not seen in 
the other islands — and high up on the steep side 
of Coronon hung the pines whose cones tipped 
the thyrsus. It was mid-January, and the tempera- 
ture was that of a warm English June. Truly 
this was Naxos — birthplace of gods. 

Our next trip took us farther afield, to the other 
side of the island. For the first hour we had the 



THE ISLES 



97 



company of M. Sommaripa, who was going to his 
pyrgos, as they call their country-houses — and 
towers they really are, stout and foursquare with 
the forked battlements of mediaeval Italy, dating 
from the times when they had to be held against 
the descents of corsairs. At the gate of this one we 
parted from its owner. We had no time to accept 
his proffered hospitality, which we regretted, for 
these towers still contain here and there precious 
specimens of old Venetian furniture. And the 
Sommaripa, who came from Verona in 1390, were 
lords of Paros and Andros, and held the latter 
until the Turkish conquest. The family ranked 
next to the Ducal House and were connected with 
it by marriage. M. Sommaripa chatted pleasantly 
to us in courtly, measured French. A fine hidalgo- 
like figure, his appearance and bearing were in 
keeping with his mediaeval tower. He was quite 
in the world here, he said, for the pyrgos com- 
manded a distant view of Naxia, the sea, and the 
weekly steamer. After a long ascent the valley of 
Trageia, the broad central hollow of the island, 
burst upon us suddenly, the slender peak of 
Coronon dominating the north, the sharp ridge of 
Zia the south. Trageia, in the centre of the 
basin, nestled amid olive groves, mingled with 
the denser green of oak and plane. The three 
villages of Potamia stood out sharply on the 
opposite slopes, and high up the steep Philoti 
'* twinkled like a grain of salt." Grey old 
churches in the richly timbered lowlands lent 

H 



98 HOME LIFE IX HELLAS 



something of an English countryside aspect to 
the landscape. On the floor of the valley we 
were in Devon, riding through hollow lanes 
beneath ivied oaks, between banks festooned with 
the familiar traveller's joy. Daisy-sprinkled 
turf, and, in the orchards, women with white ker- 
chiefs, resembling from afar the rustic English 
hood, strengthened the illusion, but the orchard 
walls were marble, and the trees olive. Naxos 
has a distinctive character. Roughly oval, some 
eighteen miles long by fifteen wide, it possesses 
no harbours, and the fertile soil yields far more 
than the inhabitants need. They are therefore 
essentially landsmen, and, like the Cretans of old, 
" ignorant of the sea." We had been amphibians 
of late, and found ourselves in a new world. Far 
out of sight and thought of the sea, the conditions 
of life at Trageia are continental. It is the 
cleanest and most cheerful place in the island. 
The shops looked more tempting than those of 
Naxia. In one there was even a suggestion of 
modes. The people think it ought to be the 
capital. They certainly represent the progressive 
element in Naxos. We had coffee under a spread- 
ing plane tree with the Demarch and the doctor. 
Dr. Valindri had studied in Paris and knew 
London, so he was glad to meet with Europeans 
in a place where they are so seldom seen. We 
were pleased too, for he was full of interesting 
local information. They wanted us to stop at 
Trageia, and we were sorry we had made other 



THE ISLES 



99 



arrangements, as we should have learnt more 
about the island and its people than we were 
likely to do elsewhere. Moreover, used as we had 
been to the bare rocks of the ^Egean and the 
niggardly soil of Attica, the rich vegetation was a 
relief to us. Soon after leaving Trageia we 
quitted level ground, and began a long and 
tedious climb, zigzagging up a natural marble 
stairway to a saddle between two mountain masses, 
whence we looked down the abrupt face of the 
island to the sea. The aspect was bleak after the 
wooded hollows we had left. Apeiranthos, our 
destination, stood out clear on a naked spur. 

We were rather apprehensive, for as Naxos is 
regarded with little favour by the other islands, so 
Apeiranthos is of poor repute in Naxos. The 
story goes that the place was founded by Barabbas, 
and its inhabitants are assiduous followers in the 
footsteps of their ancestor in respect to other 
people's property. The Naxiote version is that 
Barabbas was a Cretan, expelled from his own 
country. The Cretan part of the story is prob- 
ably true. The Apeiranthotes are certainly a 
people distinct from the rest of the Naxiotes. 
They have, as a rule, blonde complexions, like the 
Sphakiotes of Crete, and they speak a dialect 
which, in common with Cretan, preserves ancient 
words and inflections. There is little doubt that 
they are of Cretan origin. There are knots of 
Cretan immigrants in other islands. In Melos 
they form a majority. The islanders are very 



100 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



clannish, and the new-comers would be treated as 
intruders, and relegated to this remote mountain 
perch exposed to the northerly gales. The ill-will 
of the Naxiotes met with reprisals, hence their 
evil reputation, though I could discover nothing 
to justify it in these days. They are a stalwart 
race, and not a few women, fair-haired and grey- 
eyed, possessed features of classic regularity. 
They pique themselves upon their speech, and a 
youth pointed out Zia to us as Oros Dios; but he 
had no doubt seen the ancient rock-cut inscription 
on the mountain, and the rest of his remarks did 
not come up to the same standard of Hellenic 
purity. Zia may be a corruption of Zeus, and a 
trace of the old religion lingers in the reverence 
attaching to the cave. Another of our inter- 
locutors was astonished that we had never seen 
Fingal's Cave of Staffa. We were equally as- 
tounded to learn that he had even heard of it. 
It was a breach of patriotism not to have visited 
our own speleion, which, to him, held as large 
a place in Britain as that of Zia in Apeiranthos, 
After Fingal's Cave, it did not surprise me much 
to hear of Greenwich Fair. Whether that institu- 
tion lives in the memory of Londoners I know 
not, but it is green in that of Manoli Detchi, a 
youthful septuagenarian — the only mariner we 
met in the island — who joined in its revels when 
his ship lay in the Thames. He told us of those 
happily obsolete toys which, drawn sharply down 
an unsuspecting back, caused "all the fun of the 



THE ISLES 



101 



fair." So here in this remote Naxian village we 
heard about a phase of life in our native land 
quite outside our own experience — and in our own 
language too. Manoli Detchi was the only person 
on the island who knew English. He had had no 
opportunity to speak it for twenty-five years, and 
rejoiced exceedingly. Consequently much of our 
time was passed on his vine-clad verandah, or in 
his pleasant parlour, under the gaze of Queen 
Victoria and Mr. Gladstone, whose portraits 
adorned it, the while Mrs. Detchi, with a lavish 
hand, plied us with cakes and fruit and wine, 
home-made and home-grown. The wine of 
Apeiranthos is the only vintage in Naxos which 
merits the eulogium of Pindar. It is light and 
has the flavour of champagne, though it is not 
sparkling. But none of it ever finds its way down 
the mountain. We were lodged by the Demarch, 
a jovial personage who sang us old songs sprinkled 
with Turkish words and wholly Oriental as to 
melody, or rather the want of it, to our ears. A 
kid was killed and roasted in our honour, but that 
formed an insignificant part of the elaborate 
banquet, which was prolonged by toasts — too 
many toasts. The priest, the doctor, and the 
schoolmaster were our fellow-guests, and we were 
waited on by our host's two pretty daughters. 
The floor of the bedroom was of beaten earth, 
the roof open to the rafters of oak saplings; but 
the linen was fine and spotless and scented, and the 
coverlets exquisitely embroidered. After the long 



102 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



ride and the Gargantuan repast, we should have 
slept soundly without these luxuries. Next morn- 
ing we were taken to see the village beauties and 
the village patriarchs, and were sorely entreated 
to stay another night. We only got off after 
lunching copiously with the Detchis. Our host 
was indignant at the suggestion of remuneration, 
and sped us on our way with saddle-bags crammed 
with far more than our needs. And that is how we 
fared among the robbers of Apeiranthos, at the 
mention of whom our friends in Naxia had shaken 
their heads. 

Our way lay high over the mountains, and 
the sun was setting when we descended into the 
village of Vothro, lining the sides of a ravine. 
It was the Greek New Year's Day, and the 
people were on their house-tops in gala dress. 
Happily these highland villages have preserved 
the costume which is so rapidly disappearing. 
With the exception of Crete, more of it is retained 
in Naxos than elsewhere. We waited in the village 
shop whilst the muleteer went to look for the 
Demarch. The door was blocked with gazers. 
The windows were a mosaic of children's flattened 
noses. The people were a good-looking, pleasant 
lot, but it is inconvenient to be a cynosure, and we 
moved in a perpetual cloud of spectators. The 
Demarch was a quiet man of a practical turn of 
mind. He had named his little girls Kyriake and 
Paraskeve — Sunday and Friday — from the days on 
which they were born, and was going to send his 



THE ISLES 103 



son to an agricultural school. His discourse was 
on emery — the mines are near Vothro — and keetra, 
the large citrons, the bulk of which go to England 
to be made into candied peel. Vothro lives mainly 
on keetra. But we were glad of a quiet evening 
after the festivities of the previous night. The 
priest took us to see the church. He was proud 
of the ieonostasis, the screen of the sanctuary, on 
which is lavished most of the ornament in Greek 
churches. It was a heavy structure of marble, 
apparently of the seventeenth century. A far 
finer object was the gigantic plane tree in the 
churchyard. 

We started for Apollonos at eight o'clock next 
morning, taking a boy as guide. It took us four 
hours over the worst track we encountered on the 
journey. We had to lead the mules most of the 
way round shoulders that were almost precipices, 
then came a weary space of loose, rolling stones — 
a talus of screes. At last we got down to the 
beach, white, dazzling, made up of marble worn 
into smooth pebbles. Then we clambered over 
rocks of marble, the breakers thundering against 
them, then up a hill of slippery marble, getting 
foothold on the wild sage which sprouted from the 
crevices. Here, in a square cutting, we found the 
statue we had come to see, lying on its back. It is 
thirty-four feet long and looks much as depicted in 
Ross's Inselreise — a drawing he made in 1835, and 
the only one that exists, as far as I know. It is far 
from finished. The feet resemble the end of a 



104 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



mummy-case, except that one foot is slightly ad- 
vanced. The features are indistinct, but the hair 
is boldly indicated. There is a deep crack across 
the head. The marble did not seem so good as 
much close at hand, still unquarried. A shepherd 
told us there were grammata higher up ; but we 
were tired out, and we knew those grammata — the 
inscription which gives the place its name, and a 
basis for the supposition that this is a statue of 
Apollo, that was intended for his shrine on neigh- 
bouring Delos. 1 However that may be, here was 
an intention frustrated, how and why we knew no 
more than the eagle which at that moment flew 
over us. But in the presence of this uncompleted 
work in its native quarry, lying as it was left by 
its sculptors at an unknown date, one felt nearer to 
them and to their age than in looking on the 
finished masterpieces of a museum. Nothing had 
happened to it since that sudden cessation of the 
chisel. 

Komiake looked a long way off and terribly high 
up, perched on the flank of Coronon, but the track 
was better than the last, and the climb was 
lightened by the splendid scenery and the delight- 
ful figures of the little shepherd-boys with their 
pastoral crooks. This was the most primitive 
village we had seen, as it was the finest in situation. 
It stands at a greater altitude than any other place 
in the island, and far away to the east we saw 
Samos and the high coast of Asia. But the pigs were 

1 "Opos x w P L0V iepov 'A7r6X\o)i>os. 



THE ISLES 



105 



embarrassing. Lords of the roadway, they yield 
place to no biped, and their name is legion. The 
Komiake pig is long and spare of frame, and agile. 
He is also of an inquiring turn and given to ex- 
ploring the dwellings on his route, and as the 
doors are usually open, half the pig population is 
within them. The inhabitants do not object to 
this when the visitors are their own property — they 
distinguish them as readily as a shepherd does the 
individuals of his flock — but they draw the line at 
strangers ; consequently there are perpetual raids 
and sallies accompanied by human cries and por- 
cine squeals. I suggested the simple expedient of 
styes, but this innovation was deprecated on 
economic grounds. The free pig forages for his 
own living. That the condition of the street is 
that of a byre does not trouble the citizens of 
Komiake. We were lodged by the doctor, who 
was also the Demarch, and found, as elsewhere, a 
very kindly welcome. The muleteer and the village 
barber strolled into the doctor's saloon and joined 
the party as a matter of course. Class distinction 
is unknown here. 

Chill gusts and lowering skies foreboded storm 
the next morning. The mountain -tops were 
shrouded, and as we did not relish the prospect 
of being weather-bound in Komiake, we hastened 
our departure, much against the will of our host 
and hostess, who strongly urged us to stay, and 
prophesied snow and disaster, for our path took 
us higher up the mountain. The villagers seemed 



106 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



really distressed for us, and as we rode away 
exclaimed dolefully, " Cheemone, cheemone ! " 
Xeijuoovt] does not mean winter only with them, 
but rain and snow and cold, and they are terribly 
afraid of a little weather. We dipped into a 
narrow gully, and when we got to the top on the 
other side they were gazing at us from their 
roofs, and our kind host and his family were on 
his, vigorously beckoning to us to return and 
pointing to the black heavens. However, we 
were quit for a sharp hailstorm, from which we 
sheltered in a handy cave, for we were rounding 
the shoulder of Coronon amid the finest scenery 
we had yet encountered. When we got to the 
other side, and the southern lowland burst upon 
us with the sea beyond, we were in another 
climate, a land of sunshine and flowers. The 
transition was sudden and complete from the 
bleak northern face of the mountains, where our 
friends at Komiake and Apeiranthos were ex- 
periencing the rigours of cheemone. The descent 
was long and some of it rough, but at every step 
it grew warmer, though Coronon still frowned 
above us. Part of our way was bordered by 
rocks of rose-coloured marble with veins of 
a deeper hue, almost carmine. The path was 
covered with fragments of it. At last we reached 
level ground, and Engarrais with its orange 
groves and rich gardens. Soon afterwards we 
came to the beach and followed it for some miles. 
Ahead were the hills behind which we knew lay 



THE ISLES 



107 



Naxia. Those hills are unique, and I have never 
seen any so lovely elsewhere — a miniature moun- 
tain range of most graceful forms, and of a 
uniform hue of emerald, so rare a colour in the 
Cyclades. The grass slopes end in pinnacles of 
vivid green rock. It was twilight as we came to 
them, and night when we passed the fountain 
which bears the name of Ariadne, outside the 
gates of Naxia. Our good friend, M. Barozzi, 
regaled us with hot tea and rum. It grew into a 
habit with us during our stay to spend part of 
each evening with M. Barozzi. He it was who 
had found us our rooms and helped us in many 
ways. He spoke French, treasured some bound 
volumes of the Graphic, and never tired of hear- 
ing about England and the world outside Naxos. 
Those pleasant symposia were always accom- 
panied by tea and the added stimulant, a specific 
he prescribed for nearly every ill — against his own 
interests, for he was a chemist. His pharmacy is 
near the landing-place, but he dwells in the castro, 
and the tombs of his ancestors are in the cathe- 
dral ; for in 1207 the Barozzi held the barony of 
Santorin, and one of them was Bailie of Negro- 
ponte when Venice ruled the Archipelago. San- 
torin was wrested from them in 1335 by Duke 
Nicholas I of Naxos. They never regained it, 
though Duke John I gave them compensation in 
1355. They went to Crete, where they had estates, 
and when the Turks conquered it in 1699 they 
came to Naxos, where they have dwindled with 



108 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



the rest of the Latins ever since. When after- 
wards, at Santorin, we saw Scaros, the ruined 
stronghold, an eyrie on the edge of a precipice, 
built by the first Barozzi, who came with the 
Fourth Crusade, we thought of his descendant, 
our good friend at Naxos, and the strange 
romance of a later age interwoven with these 
JEgean isles, apart from their ancient glory. But 
this brings us to Santorin. 



SANTORIN 

The lip of a submerged crater, still active — that 
is the island of Santorin. A crescent-shaped mass 
of volcanic matter, it tapers to a point at each 
end, and is barely three miles wide in the middle. 
It is eighteen miles long on the outer arc, twelve 
on the inner. The approach to Santorin is a 
sight never forgotten. The northern tip of the 
crescent falls to the sea on each side in sheer 
cliffs of burnt tufa, crimson in hue. At the top 
is a layer of white, like the sugared crust on a 
cut bridecake. When that white crust resolves 
itself into houses we rub our eyes. Surely it is 
some dream city, this eyrie of domes and dwell- 
ings, roof above roof, crowding the narrow 
summit of the razor-edged promontory, clinging 
like martins' nests to the cornice of the precipice. 
Such is the first view of Epanomeria, the second 
town of Santorin. We round the point, opening 
up the inner side of the crescent. About half- 



THE ISLES 



109 



way round the sweep we see something like snow 
powdering the edges of crags with a clear drop 
of a thousand feet or more — black as Erebus 
these. That glacier thing is Phira, the capital of 
Santorin. It might have sprung from the brain 
of Albert Goodwin, one of those weird scenes he 
drew as known to Sindbad the Sailor, for it is 
like no other place on earth. As we come nearer, 
it is a dazzling white fringe set against the zenith 
between the azure and the black face of the cliff. 
It topples over the dizzy edge wherever there is a 
ledge or cranny big enough to hold a dwelling. 
To live where two feet from your door you step 
into empty space is a creepy notion, but it is an 
ordinary condition of life at Phira. There are 
places where the cliff is made of soft tufa. Here 
there is no need to seek for a ledge. The would- 
be resident scoops out his habitation. A projec- 
tion to the left as we disembark is honeycombed 
with these freeholds. The notches that give access 
to them are invisible to the unpractised eye. Some 
objects hopping about the face of the rock we 
take to be birds at first. They are children. 
Several of these pigeon-hole dwellings are so low 
that the sea flows into them. Some are under 
water. It is one of the little ways of Santorin to 
change its level. This portion sank a few years 
ago. But some spots are as suddenly raised, and 
in the whirligig of time these water-logged resi- 
dences may be high and dry again, and if Santorin 
possesses house agents, they would no doubt be 



110 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



described as " eligible." The traveller will note 
on his disembarking that the houses about the 
landing-place, when not in caves, have barrel- 
roofs of cement. This is to enable them to resist 
not only earthquakes, but a more frequent danger, 
the falling of stones from the precipice. People 
have often been killed by them. Retaining walls 
have been built and rocks shored up, but many 
overhanging boulders threaten disaster. 

On my first visit to Santorin I arrived at night 
and saw nothing of all this. It is perhaps well 
for people who are not Alpinists to go up in the 
dark. It is the way of mules always to take the 
outer edge of the path when a bad corner has 
to be faced. I saw the lights of the steamer re- 
curring at every zigzag, sheer below, and growing 
uncomfortably distant as we mounted, but that 
was all. I felt that the road was slippery and 
very " knobby " as we floundered up, and was 
glad when the mule and I lurched with a clatter 
into the twelve foot wide High Street of Phira. 
I looked out of the window next morning down 
a gentle slope, brown, treeless, apparently sterile, 
to the sea three miles away, but it did not look so 
far. I went to the other side of the house and 
looked over a wall six feet from the door — the sea 
again, a thousand feet or so perpendicular beneath 
me. This was Santorin at its widest. There is 
not much of it, and what there is consists largely 
of lava, pumice, and volcanic sand. That is why 
Phira is perched on the edge of a precipice. Every 



THE ISLES 



111 



scrap of land inside is wanted for the vines. With- 
out them the people cannot live. Even the olive, 
which finds a foothold on the barest hills, is absent 
here. There is not a tree on the island save a 
few figs, and the fig tree has a talent for thriving 
on stones. 

It was a wonderful outlook over that wall in 
front. The boats below seemed to be suspended 
in air, so clear was the blue water, a basin some 
six miles long and four wide, with precipitous 
walls, and three black islets in the middle. The 
wall opposite was Therassia, separated from the 
southern end of Santorin by a strait three miles 
wide, with a white island in the middle, a sort 
of stepping-stone. The water a thousand feet 
below went down sheer another two thousand 
feet, for the basin is a vast crater, submerged, 
but with two segments of its lip protruding from 
the sea. The larger, on which I stood, is San- 
torin, the smaller is Therassia. The three black 
islets are cones of eruption. A broad ribbon of 
vivid orange-red was flung athwart the sapphire 
waters. The discoloration was caused by oxide 
of iron streaming from a spring in the black 
islets. I could see the three masts of a barque 
moored in the narrow channel between them. She 
was having her bottom cleaned by the chemical 
action of the water. It takes about a fortnight, 
and as it costs nothing, is often resorted to by 
vessels trading in these seas. 

We sailed over to the islets the next day. From 



112 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



our boat the face of Santorin could be better seen. 
Black is the predominant hue, but layers of red 
and brown tufa streak the basaltic mass, and 
south of the town the cliffs are capped with cream- 
coloured volcanic detritus called puzzolana, used 
in making cement for submarine structures. We 
came to the first islet, a cone strewn with blackened 
boulders, between which grew a scanty herbage. 
A passage only a few feet wide divided this from 
the second islet. Here the water grew reddish, 
and innumerable bubbles rose to the surface. We 
put our hands over the side of the boat and found 
it warm. Presently, at the head of the little 
creek, it grew too hot to touch, and close to the 
rocks it boiled and steamed. The marks of fire 
were all around us. Huge boulders, cracked and 
blackened, piled high above, made a fantastic 
sky-line. To the right rose a cone, its broken top 
whitened by fire. At its base were shells of 
houses and the ruin of a tiny church. These 
were the remains of the little bathing-place, Vul- 
cano, destroyed in 1866. Nobody has dared to 
live here since. We clambered up the boulders. 
It was not so hard as it looked. The fractuosities 
afforded a good grip for the hands. Then came a 
steep slope, but the ashes made it easy. Even in 
this desolation a tiny yellow flower found susten- 
ance. From the top of the cone we looked down 
into the crater — a chasm of calcined rocks. Jets 
of steam and sulphurous smoke spurted from 
crevices. Another cone, of older date apparently, 



THE ISLES 



113 



rose to the north, and to the south lay an uneven 
plateau, perhaps half a mile wide and rather 
more in length. It was made up of scoriae, 
sulphur, lumps of red lava, and basalt boulders. 
In places it sounded hollow to the tread and like 
a drum. Here the ground was warm, smoke and 
sulphurous fumes issued from cracks, and the air 
wavered with heat. In one spot there came from 
below a sound of hissing and bubbling. A gully 
filled with masses of rock and lava barred the 
way. Getting round the end of it, we made our 
way to a range of rocks split and discoloured by 
fire. Beyond this was a ravine, an abyss of rent 
and splintered masses, black as night, or white 
and calcined, crushed and contorted. We clam- 
bered down a little way to get a better view of 
those awful walls ending in a confusion of frag- 
ments, two black ungainly snouts stretching into 
the sea. To the right, across a narrow channel, 
the third islet showed a frowning face, but it was 
green on its lower northern end. It rose from the 
depths more than two thousand years ago, in 
197 B.C., therefore it is named Palaia Kaimene, 
the Old Burnt Island. The Rhodians, then 
masters of the JEgean, called it Hiera — Sacred — 
and reared on it a temple to Poseidon. In 19 a.d. 
another islet appeared and joined itself to the 
old one. After seven centuries (726 a.d.) there 
was another increase. Theophanes describes the 
flaming rocks rising from the water. Another 
seven centuries elapsed, when in 1457 a portion 
1 



114 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



of it, amid fearful rumblings, sank into the waves 
and was replaced by a new accretion. Since then 
nothing has happened to the Old Burnt Island. 
But after remaining solitary for nearly eighteen 
centuries it had a companion. In 1573 the green 
cone to which we first came arose. It was not 
green then, but burnt for a year. So the people 
of Santorin saw two islets instead of one. Others 
had risen. Seneca tells of two in 47 a.d., and 
there was another in 60 a.d., but they dis- 
appeared. This one, however, came to stay, and 
it bears the name of Mikra Kai'mene — the Little 
Burnt Island — to this day. Seventy-seven years 
after the birth of Little Burnt Island there 
appeared another, and we have a graphic account 
of it by the Jesuit, Father Richard, who witnessed 
the phenomenon. Kolombo, as this island was 
called, was not in the basin, but some miles away 
to the north-east. Santorin was enveloped in thick 
vapour. Many people were blinded, fifty died, all 
suffered. Earthquake shocks loosened rocks which 
killed many in their fall. Drifting boats were 
found afterwards at sea, their crews dead, poi- 
soned by the noxious fumes. But Kolombo, 
after causing all this trouble, also vanished. 
Tournefort, who visited Santorin fifty years after- 
wards, quaintly remarks on "the singular fecund- 
ity of this volcano, whose islets seem to grow like 
mushrooms." He little thought that seven years 
afterwards there would arrive a permanent addi- 
tion to them. On the 21st May, 1707, at dawn, 



THE ISLES 



115 



some fishermen saw what they thought was a 
drifting boat, and put off to it. They found it 
was a moving rock, and got back to land again in 
a fright. Other rocks rose, and by the 14th June 
there was an islet a mile in circumference of a 
whitish colour, and from it issued the orange- 
coloured stream which is still such a conspicuous 
feature. The people named it White Island. On 
the 1 6th July, at sunset, a chain of great rocks, 
black, separate, shot up in a spot where before 
there were no soundings. These crashed to- 
gether, and were called Black Island. On the 
9th September Black Island and White Island 
joined and formed Nea Kaimene — New Burnt 
Island — the largest of the three, and the one I 
have attempted to describe. Santorin had an 
anxious time during the making of Nea Kai- 
mene. There were frequent earthquakes and 
explosions. The sea was disturbed and dis- 
coloured, and a multitude of dead fish floated 
on its surface. It discharged noisome vapours ; 
columns of dense smoke and steam, mingled 
with tongues of flame, arose from it ; and burn- 
ing rocks were hurled into the air. Calm was not 
restored for a year, but on the 15th July, 1708, it 
was possible to land on the new island. Not 
until 1866 did Santorin have an increase in its 
family of islets, when Aphroessa arose. But this 
accession to the dominions of King George had 
a brief existence of two years. Aphroessa dis- 
appeared in 1868, although disturbances con- 



116 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



tinued until the middle of 1870. There exists 
a very complete account of this last eruption in 
the Diary of Dr. De Cigalla, in which the pheno- 
mena are carefully noted day by day. Volcanic 
bombs were one of its features. They caused 
some deaths, notably that of the captain of a 
foreign merchant vessel. Commander Brine, of 
H.M.S. Racer, who saw the formation of the new 
islet, gives a graphic description of it : " At the 
water's edge large blocks of hissing lava and 
burning clinker slowly made their appearance, 
steam escaping from them at every pore. With 
an iron boat-hook we broke off several pieces as 
they rose above the sea . . . there was a constant 
working noise . . . sounds of stones crumbling 
and falling with sharp cracks and reports . . . 
through the fissures it could be seen that the 
inner rocks were red-hot, and from every possible 
rent or opening escaped clouds of steam and sul- 
phurous vapour . . . the sea round the burning 
island was covered with green, red, and yellow 
flames, shooting up like torches or playing like 
serpents on the face of the water." These fiery 
seas appear to have accompanied all former erup- 
tions. Father Richard mentions them in 1650, 
whilst Seneca, quoting an eye-witness of the 
eruption which gave birth to Old Burnt Island 
in 197 B.C., says: " The sea foamed, smoke came 
out, then flame like lightning, then the summit 
of an island." 

Santorin and Therassia are but the fragments of a 



THE ISLES 



117 



once greater and fairer isle, witnesses to a mighty 
cataclysm. Herodotus tells of the island Kalliste, 
of which Santorin is but a vestige, and geologists 
support him in the belief that a great cone formerly 
rose where this basin of sea now rolls. Sir Charles 
Lyell conjectures the date of the catastrophe to be 
about 2000 B.C. The forces that wrought it are 
not yet spent, as the boiling waters, the smoking 
rocks, and frequent tremors and rumblings attest. 
Subsidences often occur, and remains of submerged 
buildings are found near the coast. There are 
some off Epanomeria. In 1650 two towns, buried 
and forgotten, were unearthed by the disturbances. 
They may be seen near Perissa and Kamara. It 
is an eerie place, this Santorin, and it is not to be 
wondered at that, in times not long gone by, 
popular belief regarded it as the chosen home of 
ghouls and vampires and the like uncanny beings. 
Swallows avoid it, although the cliffs would afford 
them an ideal nesting-place. Man, less timid or 
less wise than the swallows, has dwelt on it from 
the remotest ages. He has left traces which 
science attributes to a period anterior to the cata- 
clysm, if the date assigned to it is correct. To-day, 
next to Syra, it is the most progressive and the 
most prosperous of the Cyclades. But whilst the 
importance of Syra dates from yesterday and is due 
to an accidental cause outside itself, that of San- 
torin extends through its whole history and is 
spontaneous. Thera — the ancient name is now its 
official title — has a great past. Its remains attest 



118 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



the opulence and culture of its people in the classic 
ages. The fragments of statuary in the little 
museum of Phira include examples of the best 
period of Greek art, among them two heads which 
are attributed to Polyclitus. The solitary chapel, 
known as the Marble St. Nicholas, is perhaps the 
most perfect antique Heroon in existence. The 
city of CEa is the Pompeii of the Cyclades. Its 
excavation is due to Baron Hiller von Gaertingen, 
whose sumptuous work on Thera certifies to the 
high estimation in which it is held by the archae- 
ologist and the historian. In later times, when 
Thera was known as Santorin — the isle of Saint 
Irene — it was a possession coveted by the filibuster- 
ing nobles who carved out their baronies with 
their swords. No less than five castles frowned on 
its steeps. But it was not all fighting and feasting. 
Buondelmonti, the distinguished Florentine, who 
was the first European scholar to visit and describe 
Greek lands, arrived at Santorin about the time 
Agincourt was fought. He tells how Duke 
Giacomo I, who died in 1418, tried to sound the 
basin with a rope a thousand paces long, without 
success ; " and those who held the rope let it drop 
into the abyss, so great was its weight." Evidently, 
Duke Giacomo had scientific leanings. 

The vine is practically the only thing that grows 
in Santorin. Wine is the staple product and by 
far the most important export. The other two are 
puzzolana and pumice-stone. All three are gifts 
of the volcano, for it is the sulphur with which the 



\ 



THE ISLES 



119 



soil is impregnated that keeps the grapes healthy, 
they say. There are many varieties. The San- 
torin folk, I believe, count as many as sixty, and 
there is one grape of extraordinary size, as big as 
a walnut. But as I have never been there when 
the grapes are ripe I cannot vouch for it. A vine- 
yard in winter is a curious sight. The ashen-grey 
earth is littered with what look like old wicker- 
baskets. The vines are so pruned and trained 
that they may be woven into the form of a cup, 
within which are placed stones. This is to prevent 
them from being torn up or damaged by the violent 
winds that sweep over the island. It is the treat- 
ment of the grape that mainly contributes to the 
variety in character of the wine. The sweet vino 
santo comes from grapes that have been exposed to 
the sun for fourteen days after being plucked. 
The much-esteemed nyktos, wine of the night, is 
made from grapes gathered before sunrise. The 
wines of Santorin deserve their reputation. Like 
all vintages from volcanic soil, they are potent, and 
are largely consumed in Russia. As dessert wines 
they are prized, but a grower with whom I dined 
gave me a wine of a Bordeaux character which he 
had succeeded in producing. I never met with 
anything like it elsewhere in the Levant. Though 
wine is plentiful water is scarce. It depends on 
the rains, and in times of drought has to be im- 
ported from other islands. There is absolutely no 
pasturage, and consequently no sheep and cattle. 
There are enough goats to supply milk, but beef 



120 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



and mutton come from outside, and in bad weather 
Santorin has to go without them. A treeless 
island is also necessarily dependent on others for 
its fuel. Fodder for the transport animals, mules 
and donkeys, must be obtained from elsewhere. 
The vines cannot be sacrificed, yet the mules 
do get a portion of the young shoots. Though 
Santorin is waterless it is very damp. Everything 
rusts and moulders, and the inhabitants are subject 
to rheumatism. Their eyes suffer, too, from the 
dust. The volcanic sand fills the air whenever 
there is wind, which is very often. Then the 
women go about with faces swathed in their black 
kerchiefs. The existence of leprosy is attributed 
to the conditions of life and to bad water. There 
is a leper colony outside the town, happily a small 
one. Landslips and earthquake shocks, of not 
infrequent occurrence, do not add to the amenities 
of existence in Santorin. One would not expect 
in such an environment to find a very cheerful 
population. Yet the people of this weird spot are 
the most lively in the Cyclades. The poor are 
more polished in their manners than those of the 
other islands. We remarked it everywhere — at 
Epanomeria among the seafarers, at Akrotiri on 
the southern extremity of the island, at Pyrgos 
and Emborion, the inland towns — if anything can 
be inland in a country where it is impossible to 
get more than a mile and a half from the sea. The 
air of well-being that pervades Santorin is lacking 
in Naxos, notwithstanding the natural advantages 



THE ISLES 



121 



of the latter. The habitations and the streets in 
Santorin are clean and wholesome, even in those 
queer troglodyte villages scooped out of the tufa 
and hidden in gullies. There is little of interest 
either in costume or character. Modernity is the note 
of this island. But it is not the imitative modern- 
ity of the great Levantine seaports, and it is 
neither ridiculous nor pretentious. It may perhaps 
be described as an absence of Orientalism and may 
be illustrated by Stamati. He was a cook, the 
only one we found in the Cyclades. It may be 
doubted whether he has a rival in the Greek 
dominions. With the slender resources of the 
island he prepared a repast that Brillat Savarin 
would not have disdained. They pretend to make 
omelettes at Athens. Stamati made an omelette. 
Fish is, of course, a stand-by in a land where the 
supply of flesh must depend on the weather. 
Stamati's red mullet en papillote was the work of a 
master. He had cooked in France and in Egypt. 
The French cuisine had no mysteries for him. He 
had written a cookery book in modern Greek. 
And he took it all as a matter of course. Phira 
society entertains largely. Dinners and soirees 
kept Stamati going. Sweets and pastry were the 
creations in which he took most pride. Such an 
artist would have starved on any of the other 
islands. The Latins were his best customers. 
The Latins of Santorin, unlike those of Naxos, 
do not live in the past. The faded splendours of 
the castro are naught to them. They have their 



122 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



pedigrees but do not set much store by them. 
Instead, they try to retrieve their fallen fortunes. 
I have met Delendas in Egypt, and Da Carognas 
in Malta. There are, of course, representatives of 
those distinguished Catalan families on the island, 
as there are of the De Cigallas, who came from 
Genoa in the fifteenth century, though they also 
are probably of Spanish origin. There are about 
five hundred of them clustered round the Latin 
church and convent. They have schools as in 
Naxos, and French is so prevalent that it was hard 
to realise, when enjoying their hospitality, that 
our hosts were a relic of a feudal adventure in a 
remote island, poised over a crater which reminds 
them from time to time that humanity has a pre- 
carious tenure on Santorin. If the fragments of 
the once " round island," Sirongyle, were to follow 
the rest of it there would be an end of the inhabi- 
tants of Santorin. They know it, but they take it 
lightly. "If it were to happen we should all go 
together, so there would be no regrets." So, 
literally, they dance on a volcano. Well, their 
ancestors feasted in their castles when the Turk 
was thundering at the gate. 



THE ISLES 



123 



THE NORTHERN SPORADES AND THE 
ARGOLIDS 

North of the Cyclades is the group, off the 
Magnesian Peninsula, known as the Northern 
Sporades. There are about a score of them, in- 
cluding rocks and islets with an intermittent 
shepherd population, but only four are perma- 
nently inhabited. Skiathos, nearest to the main- 
land and overlooked by Pelion, partakes of the 
physical character of that mountain. After the 
nudity of the Cyclades, the dense woods and 
thickets of Skiathos are a relief to the eye. There 
is a good harbour, and a deserted town and 
monastery, for the 2800 inhabitants of Skiathos 
have migrated to other parts of the island. 
Skiathos has suffered badly from earthquakes. 
There was a disastrous one in 1868. Skopelos 
lies to the east of Skiathos. It is the most 
populous island of the group, containing some 
5000 souls. The people of Skopelos have hardly 
any relations with Greece, but their quaint ves- 
sels, with high carved sterns, are to be seen in the 
Golden Horn, the Bosphorus, and the ports of 
the Black Sea, whither they carry their citrons, 
their oil, and their good red wine. Skopelos 
also is subject to earthquakes — the one of 1867 
caused great havoc — but it is fruitful and boasts 
of two harbours* North-east of Skopelos is 
Chiliodromia, the isle of "a thousand paths" — less 



124 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 

productive than Skopelos, but very lovely with 
its thickly wooded steeps and train of attendant 
islets. It swarms with rabbits, and its waters 
yield an abundance of fish, the main source of 
livelihood of its 500 inhabitants, who enjoy 
the advantage of a good harbour. Far sea- 
ward, apart from the rest of the group, rises the 
bold outline of Homer's " lofty Skyros," 1 its light- 
house, familiar to mariners making for the Darda- 
nelles. Skyros is considerably larger than the 
other islands, though its population, some 3500, 
is smaller than that of Skopelos. Its situation is 
the most solitary in the ^Egean, all other islands 
being nearer either to each other or the mainland. 
It consists of two mountain masses joined by a 
narrow isthmus. Exceedingly well watered, it 
abounds in fruit, and the valleys afford good 
pasturage. It exports oranges and lemons, figs, 
wine, madder, sheep and goats and a few cattle, 
and it grows wheat of excellent quality for home 
consumption. Its heights are clad with oak and 
beech, fir and plane, and contain veins of 
coloured marble of great beauty. Skyros pre- 
sents enchanting prospects on every side, and 
over it all is the glamour of Hellenic myth : 
here Thetis concealed Achilles; here Theseus 
was slain, and hence his bones were taken by 
Cimon to Athens. 

1 Mr. Walter Leaf, in his edition of the Iliad, has a note 
referring - to book ix. 668, stating- that the Skyros therein was 
said by the Scholia to be a city of Phrygia, not the island. 



THE ISLES 125 



The history of the Northern Sporades is much 
the same as that of the Cyclades, though they 
became Turkish a quarter of a century earlier, and 
180 years earlier than Tenos. They were seized 
by the Italian brothers Ghisi in 1207, recovered 
for the Greek Emperor 1273, raided by the Cata- 
lans in 1303, annexed by Venice in 1453, and 
taken by Barbarossa in 1538 with the connivance 
of the Greeks, as was the case in the Turkish con- 
quest of Naxos and Andros. Skyros at once 
handed over the Venetian rector Cornaro, with 
his staff, and offered tribute. Memmo, the rector 
of Skiathos, hoping to hold out, armed the natives, 
whom he trusted. They treacherously killed him, 
made overtures to the Turks, and actually let down 
ropes and drew them up into the castle. The act 
was all the baser as they had been well treated by 
the Venetians. But the result did not answer to 
their expectations. Barbarossa promptly beheaded 
the ringleaders and carried off the rest into slavery. 
The terrible Admiral of the red beard, ruthless 
and bloody though he was, liked fair fighting. 

The three small but populous isles — Hydra, 
Spetzse, and Poros — nestling under the coast of 
Argolis, are peopled by Albanians. Hydra has 
6400, Spetzse 5200, and Poros 4500 — a population 
purely maritime. They played a leading part 
in the War of Independence and were the nursery 
of the Greek navy. Hydra hung back at first. It 
was a little republic, and not badly off with a 
tribute to the Porte of £30 a year and fifty seamen. 



126 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



But having once made up its mind, Hydra took 
the lion's share of the fighting, and has the lasting 
glory of having produced the hero Miaoulis. Both 
Spetzaa and Hydra own ships and sail them. One 
meets as many of the male population out of the 
islands as in them. There is a strong contingent 
in the navy, and in command of Greek steamers. 
All the islands are picturesque, with their white 
houses on the rocks, but Poros excels the others 
in the superb panorama of land and sea. It is 
only four hours by steamer from Piraeus, and 
therefore much frequented in summer by the Athe- 
nians, whose villas dot it and peep from the olive 
groves on the mainland quite close at hand. The 
naval arsenal was at Poros until 1877, and the 
naval school is there still. On Poros is the site 
of the Temple of Poseidon, made famous for all 
time by the death of Demosthenes. 

On the opposite side of the gulf lies Salamis, 
stretching across the Bay of Eleusis, close to the 
mainland of Attica, and thrusting out a tongue 
which almost touches it near Megara. The home 
of Ajax is about thirty-six square miles in extent, 
very irregular in shape, and rising to 1330 feet at 
its highest point. The ferry is about five miles 
from Piraeus, soon after leaving which we pass 
the hill whence Xerxes is said to have watched 
the famous battle. The road commands a view of 
its site, round the point of Cynosuro. The naval 
arsenal is a mile to the right of the landing-place. 
Notwithstanding the associations of Salamis, its 



THE ISLES 



127 



inhabitants are not nautical, but tillers of the soil. 
They are Albanians, as are those of Eleusis oppo- 
site and much of the neighbouring mainland. If 
the visitor happens to arrive on a feast day, he 
will probably see some characteristic dances and 
good Albanian costumes. It is an easy walk to 
the monastery of Phaneromene, from which there 
is a fine prospect of the bay and town of Eleusis. 

JEg'msLy in the midst of the Saronic Gulf and 
fifteen miles from Pirasus, is a conspicuous object 
from the Acropolis and other points of view at 
Athens. Though it was politically 4 ' an eyesore" 
to the Athenians in the time of Pericles, its grace- 
ful profile is very beautiful, especially at sunset, 
when it is steeped in hues of tender violet. It is 
triangular, and at the apex rises the symmetrical 
peak called simply Oros, the mountain. From 
its summit, 1742 feet, the view embraces Attica as 
far as the Isthmus of Corinth, and on the other 
side Argolis and Epidaurus, whilst seaward the 
Cyclades stud the -^gean. The angles at the 
base are occupied respectively by the Temple of 
Athena on the east, and the modern town on the 
site of the ancient one on the west. The lower 
portion of the island is well tilled. The rest is 
barren mountain. The roads are mere tracks 
leading through diversified rock scenery, though 
bare of trees. The air of ^Egina is very pure 
and invigorating, and Athenians resort to it in 
summer. Olives, figs, and almonds thrive, the 
latter especially. Sponge-fishing occupies many 



128 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



of the inhabitants. Another industry is the 
making of kanatia — the two-handled amphorae of 
red earthenware used everywhere in Greece. The 
^Eginetans number between 7000 and 8000. There 
were 10,000 in 1826, owing to an influx of refugees 
from Scio and Psara. There is a strong infusion 
of Albanian blood, for the island was repeopled 
by Albanians after it had been depopulated by 
Barbarossa in 1537. ^Egina has had a chequered 
history. A formidable rival to Athens in early 
times, it was destined to become the capital of the 
new Hellas in 1826, ere that distinction was con- 
ferred on the city of Athens. That was under 
the Presidency of Capodistrias, whose bust adorns 
the square of the modern town. A better monu- 
ment to him is the great orphan asylum he built 
and filled with children brought back from slavery 
in Egypt, whither they had been carried when 
Ibrahim Pasha invaded the Morea. The building 
still remains, though it has been turned to other 
uses, .^Egina, too, can boast of the first museum 
established in Greece, though most of its treasures 
have been removed to Athens. 

Cerigo, or Kythera, as it is named officially by 
the Greek Government, lies off stormy Cape Malea, 
and with its satellite Cerigotto, or Antikythera, 
forms a sort of outpost of Crete. It was one of 
the Ionian Islands down to the termination of 
the British Protectorate in 1864, but is not now 
reckoned among them, and rightly so, for Cerigo 
is not only widely sundered from that group in 



THE ISLES 



129 



geographical position, but differs also in climate, 
in physical character, and in its people, who are 
mainly of Cretan origin. The island is twenty 
miles long by twelve wide. It grows grain, vine, 
and olive, but much of it is unproductive, and it 
is far behind the Ionian Isles in fertility, and ill- 
supports its 6000 inhabitants, many of whom go 
as harvesters to the mainlands of both Europe 
and Asia. Quails are netted in the season in 
large quantities, and there is some fishing. 
Natives of Cerigo are largely employed as waiters. 
Some hotels in Athens are entirely staffed by 
them. They are civil and hard-working, and 
though a large proportion of them remain years 
away from the island, they are much attached to 
it, and never forget the 7th October, when, few 
or many, they meet to celebrate the festival of the 
Virgin of the Myrtle Bough. A picture of the 
Panagia was borne miraculously across the sea to 
Kythera — they call their island by its ancient 
name — and lodged in a myrtle bush. Thus they 
have their Cytherean Aphrodite, whose cult was 
brought to their island in a far-off age by Tyrians 
who came for the purple murex, of which the 
shells still strew the shore. Cerigo has been un- 
happy in its rulers. It fell to the share of the 
Venieri in 1207, absentees who lived in Crete, 
and handed it over to tax-farmers. The Venetians 
who nominally governed it until 1797, lost interest 
in it when they lost Crete, and left its administra- 
tion to a rapacious oligarchy. In 1545 the popula- 

K 



130 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



tion was reduced to little more than 1800, and 
in 1562 all wanted to emigrate, which led to the 
creation of the Council of Thirty, who did little 
to relieve the general poverty. 

Eubcea — one never hears it called Negroponte 
in Greece — the largest island in the ^Egean after 
Crete, can hardly be regarded as an island, so 
close is the mainland, to which it has been joined 
by a bridge ever since 411 B.C. It belongs nomin- 
ally to the Northern Sporades, but its wealth and 
importance give it a place by itself. Attica and 
Bceotia, from which it is divided by a narrow 
land-locked strip of sea, are far less productive. 
Indeed, nowhere in Greece is there such an air of 
prosperity, save perhaps the Messenian plain and 
the currant country bordering the Corinthian 
Gulf. Its mountains catch the rains that would 
otherwise fall on the mainland, which it supplies 
with corn and wine. Moreover, they are lofty 
enough to retain snow — Mount Dirphys is 
6725 feet — and so become well-stored cisterns 
and fertilising agents. Eubcea is also rich in 
quarries and mines. Magnesite is mined by an 
English company, and fire-bricks are turned out 
in large quantities. Elsewhere lignite is worked 
and marble is quarried. In length ninety miles, 
and varying from four to thirty miles wide, Eubcea 
is geologically a continuation of Ossa and Pelion, 
as Andros and Tenos are continuations of Eubcea. 
Steaming through the Euripos, the island pre- 
sents aspects of grandeur, and the mountains in 



THE ISLES 



131 



the northern half are clad with forests of oak and 
pine. Passing through the swing-bridge, where 
the straits become a narrow canal, Chalcis comes 
into view, one of the most beautifully situated 
towns in Greece, and one of the cleanest and 
most cheerful. It contains 8700 out of the 108,000 
inhabitants of the island. Eubcea has a long 
history. It sent colonies to Italy and Sicily as 
early as 900 B.C. It was one of the most prized 
possessions of Venice, and the standard of Negro- 
ponte was one of the three hoisted on the tall 
masts before St. Mark's. Under the Turks it 
was the residence of the Capitan Pasha, and the 
head - quarters of a province which included 
Athens. It fell to the Turks in 1470, after it 
had been ruled for two hundred and sixty-five 
years, first by Lombard barons, then by Vene- 
tians. Unlike the Cyclades, the present popula- 
tion contains no traces of their descendants. On 
the contrary, it is the only part of Greece in 
which the Turks still linger, except parts of 
Thessaly. In Chalcis there is also a small colony 
of Jews, probably a remnant of the large colony 
which existed there under the Venetians. With 
the exception of Corfu, it is hard to find a Jew 
elsewhere in Greece. The Albanian element pre- 
vails in the south of the island, and, as in Thes- 
saly, Vlach shepherds range the mountains. 



CHAPTER III 



TYPES AND TRAITS 
GREEK says he is going to Europe when 



ii he is going to France or Italy. He calls 
Englishmen, Germans, or any other Western 
people who happen to visit or reside in Greece, 
Europeans in contradistinction to the Greeks. 
The occidentals in Greece do likewise. They 
are Europeans, and by implication, the Greeks 
are not. When they leave the Piraeus for Trieste 
or Naples or Marseilles they speak of going to 
Europe, inferring thereby that Greece is not in 
Europe. This is, on the face of it, an anomaly, 
but it is common sense. The Constantinople 
merchant, when he reaches his home at Moda, 
does not change from a European to an Asiatic 
because his office is in Galata, and he would 
be deservedly laughed at if, on wishing his 
Galata friends good-bye, he said, " I am starting 
for Asia." The Greek is racially and geographi- 
cally European, but he is not a Western. That is 
what he means by the term, and the signification 
is accepted by both Greek and foreigner. He is 
Oriental in a hundred ways, but his Orientalism 
is not Asiatic. He is the bridge between East 
and West, and he may claim to have moulded the 




TYPES AND TRAITS 133 



latter in times past. Now it moulds him in cer- 
tain ways ; but he is a Hellene for all that, and 
there is more than the breadth of the Adriatic 
between Brindisi and Patras. Gaetano saw you 
off on the Apulian shore ; Spiridion greets you on 
the shore of Achaia. Apulia is remote, on the 
heel of Italy. It was Magna Grascia once, and at 
least one Greek song — 'H VovixacrrdXa — is still 
sung in it. But Gaetano is much nearer to Dover 
than Spiridion. The latter is probably closer to 
the Dover man in complexion than Gaetano, who 
is usually brown of hue, and he is more than 
probably better educated, but he is farther from 
Western Europe. His komboloia is a detail 
which indicates that. The beads which he lets 
slide through his listless fingers may once have 
had a religious signification. But now they 
neither represent the ninety-nine attributes of 
Allah nor the Catholic rosary. That chaplet 
which is his inseparable companion when his 
fingers are not otherwise employed, in which he 
finds a solace unknown to Westerns, marks him 
off from Apulia as much as from Kent. He plays 
cards in the street at ten o'clock in the morning — a 
proceeding which would excite remark at Dover, 
though not at Brindisi. But the komboloia is 
unknown to Gaetano ; so is the water-pipe, the 
nargileh, whose soothing bubble we hear as we 
pass the long lines of little tables on the quay at 
Patras. Yet Patras is very Western for Greece. 
It is the only considerable town with its face to the 



134 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



West. Here is a steamer — a Cunarder which has 
done with transatlantic service — loading currants 
for Liverpool, and here is a Welsh schooner, with 
the name Port Madoc on her stern, discharging 
salt cod for a people who for two hundred days 
out of the year are not allowed by their creed to 
eat fresh fish. English ships have come here for 
centuries, and Patras was a frequented port 
when the Piraeus was uninhabited save by a few 
monks. Notwithstanding, there is a strange- 
ness about everything which is not the sleepi- 
ness of Southern Italy, and one realises that in 
crossing the narrow Adriatic one has come to the 
East. It is not the black-robed clergy in queer 
stove-pipe hats with the brim at the top and their 
long hair bunched up into a chignon behind. It 
is not the saraffs — those bankers with their capital 
displayed in glass cases set on a table in the 
street. It is not the dress. That, unfortunately, 
is now mostly European and ugly at Patras, 
though one has an occasional glimpse of a fusta- 
nella or a white-clad, black-broidered Albanian. 
These externals are accidents, and do not make 
the Oriental atmosphere. That is indicated rather 
by manner, by the standpoint from which life is 
regarded, by the way things go ; and it is not our 
way. One instance of it is the vagueness of in- 
formation on everyday matters, small but im- 
portant, such as the hour of departure of trains 
and steamers. Time-tables may exist in Greece, 
but the writer has never seen one. In Athens 



TYPES AND TRAITS 135 



itself, apart from two or three of the principal 
hotels, the traveller who wishes to ascertain when 
his train starts must go to the station and inquire, 
or consult the time-sheets at the booking-office. 
Ask in a shop or a cafe, and the almost inevitable 
response is a surprised " How should I know?" 
In Italy the waiter would refer to the handy little 
Orario, which may be purchased everywhere for 
a penny. In England he would produce an 
A, B. C. On the other hand, the Greek waiter 
or shop assistant is ready with information as to 
the policy of European governments, and if you 
are an Englishman, will probably comment on 
recent speeches in the House of Commons, of 
which he has read a summary in an Athenian 
journal. Only yesterday the writer was treated to 
an explanation of the attitude of Sir Edward Grey 
towards the Cretan Question by a youthful shop- 
man, who, however, could not tell him how long 
it took to get to Megara, nor from which station 
the train started. One in his position in England 
would know and care nothing about foreign 
cabinet ministers, but the local time-table would 
have no mysteries for him. This absorbing in- 
terest in politics is distinctively Greek, but the 
constantly recurring answer to an inquiry " Who 
knows?" is Oriental. The Pios exevrei of the 
Greek is a literal translation of the Kim bileer 
of the Turk and the Meen araf of the Arab. It 
is facile, and it saves trouble. It is the invariable 
response of the peasant to the traveller who asks 



136 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



his opinion as to weather prospects, and it is 
followed by the remark "God alone knows," or 
"It is in the hands of God." This disposes of 
the question finally. There is nothing further to 
be said. The Western rustic uses the intelli- 
gence God has given him to draw an inference 
on the subject from his surroundings — the direc- 
tion of the wind, the aspect of mountains, the 
state of the atmosphere, the behaviour of birds 
and insects, which he knows from past experience 
are indications of an approaching change ; and 
his interpretation of these signs is usually correct. 
In this he differs from the Greek, who is content 
to take things as they come. Whether this fatal- 
ism is derived from contact with the Turk or 
inherited from his remote ancestors is a problem. 
From what we know of the inquisitive, eager, 
speculative character of the ancient Hellenes, the 
latter assumption seems improbable. The in- 
quisitive spirit has lost none of its vigour. This 
survival of the manners of the Homeric age is, 
indeed, a nuisance. The curiosity of the Greek 
knows no limits. He is not content with learning 
the nationality of the stranger, whence he comes 
and whither he is going. He questions him 'as 
to his family, his calling, his income, his age, his 
wife's age if he has one, the number and sex of 
his children, the price he has paid for his clothes, 
the nature, use, and cost of any article in his pos- 
session which happens to attract attention. And 
the traveller is catechised in this fashion at every 



TYPES AND TRAITS 137 



place he comes to, usually in the presence of an 
interested audience. It is exceedingly annoying, 
and to the Western, gross impertinence. But it 
is not meant as such. It is in the manners of the 
people, and the Greek will freely volunteer in- 
formation about himself, his relations, and his 
affairs. The above applies mainly to rural Greece. 
In the larger towns greater discretion is exercised, 
though even in Athens the stranger is the object 
of the national curiosity. Those Athenians who 
are too polite to ask him directly what is his pro- 
fession, seek to learn it by indirect inquiries, or 
assign to him one which seems probable. Among 
the tradespeople of the quarter where he dwells 
the author enjoys an undeserved reputation as an 
expert in metallurgy, a branch of knowledge of 
which he is profoundly ignorant. 

A habit which strikes the stranger as peculiar 
is that of calling people only by their baptismal 
names. The Greeks do this, not only to each 
other, but to foreigners as well. He who sojourns 
in a Greek community soon finds himself addressed 
and spoken of as Mr. John or Mr. William. This 
is not so singular as it might appear among a 
nation in which surnames are a comparatively 
recent development. Turks and Arabs have the 
same custom for the same reason. Birthdays are 
taken no notice of in Greece, but each individual 
keeps his festival on the day of the saint whose 
name he bears. Probably Joannes is the com- 
monest name in Greece as it is with us — the 



\ 



138 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



diminutive Yanni is invariably used — and all the 
Johns rejoice on the day dedicated to one of the 
saints of that name. Constantine comes next 
perhaps in popular favour, and innumerable 
Costas celebrate with special intention the feast 
of Saints Constantine and Helena. The many 
Greeks whose baptismal names are taken from 
antique sources — Sophocles, Xenophon, Demos- 
thenes, Euphrosyne, Calliope, etc. — get over the 
difficulty by feasting on All Saints' Day. So 
that Herakles and Aphrodite occupy a temporary 
place in the Christian Calendar, as do also some 
illustrious names in modern history. The writer 
once knew a Constantinople Greek whose baptis- 
mal name was Monk. He knew nothing about 
the monastic signification of the word, but he was 
so called after General Monk, of whom his father 
was an admirer. 

The Greek custom of eating out of a common 
dish always strikes the new-comer from the W est 
as a distinctive peculiarity. As a matter of fact, it 
is not. It is merely an Oriental habit which the 
Greek shares with Turks, Arabs, and other 
Eastern peoples. Of course it is not met with 
among the wealthy Greeks, who have probably 
been educated in Europe and live in European 
fashion, but it is universal among the humbler 
classes, and in rural society it extends to the 
well-to-do. Many a man whom one sees dining 
in an ordinary manner in an Athenian restaurant 
discards plates at home. 



TYPES AND TRAITS 139 



The Greek Church is dealt with elsewhere ; suf- 
fice to say here that it is Oriental and apart from 
the West, and prides itself on being so. The 
Calendar and the retention of the Old Style are 
details, but they are marks of distinction between 
the Greek and the West. Only the other day the 
writer was asked by a peasant boy of Kalavryta 
if the year were 1910 with the Franks as with the 
Hellenes. 

The status of women is the most salient Oriental 
characteristic. It is necessary to state here that 
these remarks embrace the Greek nation as a 
whole. Those who only know Athenian society, 
with its French salons and English governesses, 
know no more about the Greek people than one 
whose experience is limited to advanced 44 Young 
Turks " of Constantinople knows about the Turks. 
The noble efforts for the improvement of the con- 
dition of women made by a few Athenian ladies 
are spoken of elsewhere, and one of the brightest 
features of Athenian life is the excellent provision 
made for the education of girls, rich and poor. 
None the less, the Greek woman, generally speak- 
ing, is regarded as of slight importance compared 
with the man. The Mainote father announces the 
birth of a son by firing a gun repeatedly, and the 
welcome news is responded to in a similar manner 
by his neighbours on the mountain-side. But no 
fen de joie heralds the advent of a daughter. There 
was a time when reading and writing were looked 
upon as undesirable for women. There are prob- 



140 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



ably few who hold that opinion now. But there 
are plenty who consider that education is un- 
necessary, if not harmful, for their girls, as Greeks 
who are working for women's weal know full well. 
It is sometimes a hard matter to get parents to 
send their daughters to school. The wife of the 
Greek peasant is a drudge in both house and 
field, and the wife of the townsman leads as a 
rule a secluded life with no interests beyond those 
of her household. There is very little entertaining 
among the Greeks except on the occasion of family- 
events, weddings or baptisms. Even in Athens, 
only a restricted section of society " receives." 
Dinner-parties are almost unheard of. At social 
functions the opposite sexes do not mix freely. 
The ladies discuss their own affairs apart. This 
is a survival of the seclusion of women which was 
common to all Orientals, Christian as well as 
Moslem. Until the nineteenth century the 
Christian woman in the East was less free than 
her Moslem sister, who enjoyed certain legal 
rights and privileges denied to the Christian. In 
Maina and in some of the islands of the -^gean 
there has never existed, at any period, a Turkish 
population, yet women were there subjected to a 
more rigid seclusion than that of the harem, down 
to times comparatively recent. Girls were rarely 
allowed to go out of the house, and when they did 
they were veiled and surrounded by a vigilant 
guard of their relations. They passed their time be- 
hind latticed windows, learning to weave, to sew 



TYPES AND TRAITS 141 



and embroider, and to rear silkworms. They were 
never consulted as to the choice of a husband. 
That was done for them by their friends and 
relations, whose interests and predilections alone 
were considered, and not those of the contracting 
parties, who were frequently betrothed whilst 
infants of tender age. The spirit lingers still, 
especially in communities which have had little 
or no contact with Westerns, and marriage in 
all classes is, in the vast majority of instances, 
a commercial transaction in which the dowry is 
the principal factor. 

The Greeks were always clannish, and they are 
still. To the stranger they are all Greeks, but he 
gradually finds out that to themselves they are 
Messenians or Laconians or Argives or Thes- 
salians or Eubceans, and a lengthened sojourn 
among them teaches him to discern sharp lines of 
division in the character, disposition, and mode 
of speech of the inhabitants of the various parts 
of the kingdom. Athens and ^Egina do not go 
to war as in old times, nor does Sparta ravage 
Messenia, but there are marked differences between 
the populations. The hardest thing in the forma- 
tion of the Greek kingdom, both during and after 
the War of Independence, was to bring about a 
fusion of the various liberated provinces. Pelo- 
ponnesus wanted to govern itself, whilst in 
continental Greece the Rumeliot capitani in the 
west and Odysseus in the east were at daggers 
drawn. As Byron said to some German officers 



142 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



who came as volunteers in the cause, they had 
before them the ungrateful and difficult task of 
serving Greece in spite of the Greeks. Those 
times of discord are now happily over, and all are 
Hellenes in matters which affect the welfare of 
Hellas, but within this greater unity there is a 
strong feeling of local patriotism. The native of 
Attica regards his neighbour in Bceotia as some- 
thing apart. The Spartan on one side of Taygetus 
differs from the Messenian on the other, and the 
CEtolian does not see eye to eye with the Thessa- 
lian. The clannish spirit has more minute ramifi- 
cations. It marks valley from valley, and where 
costume is still worn, one village is distinguished 
from another by the colour of the women's ker- 
chiefs. In Athens, which is a microcosm of 
Greece, the divisions are broader, but distinct. 
The Athenian will tell you that there are many 
foreigners — xenoi — at the University, by which 
term he does not mean students of other nation- 
alities, but Greeks from the provinces and the 
islands. And the provincials themselves stick 
together as much as possible. As a rule you will 
find that the employees of a Peloponnesian trades- 
man are from that region, and there are restaurants 
and wineshops frequented almost exclusively by 
Ionians or Eubceans or Cretans or Thessalians. 
This clannishness extends in some instances to 
trades. The bakers of Athens are almost exclu- 
sively Epirotes. Most of the hotel-keepers are 
islanders, and of course their staff is recruited 



TYPES AND TRAITS 143 



mainly from the particular island to which they 
belong. 

In a former chapter a passing remark was made 
as to the fair complexions of many of the Greeks 
in the Peloponnesus. Professor Mahaffy in his 
Rambles and Studies in Greece has a passage in 
which he notes his astonishment at finding in 
Argos every second child fair with blue eyes, like 
a transplanted Northern, and he goes on to say 
that, after the deep brown children of Southern 
Italy, nothing is more curious than these fairer 
children under a hotter sky. It reminded him of 
Homer's King of Sparta, with fair skin and yellow 
hair, and it seemed to him to be most common in 
districts where the blood was unmixed. It may 
be so. The colour on statues showed that the 
ancients tinted the hair gold and the eyes blue. It 
is most prevalent in the southern parts of the 
Peloponnesus, and recurs in the Sphakiotes of 
Crete, who are supposed to be of old Hellenic 
stock, and in the village of Apeiranthos in the 
island of Naxos, whose inhabitants are probably of 
Sphakiote origin. No contrast can be greater 
than that between the fair people of Central and 
Southern Peloponnesus and the dark folk in the 
extreme north of Thessaly, whose sharp features 
frequently remind one of the figures on Assyrian 
monuments. Both types may be seen in Athens — 
the latter among the itinerant vendors of sweets, 
the former among the shoeblacks. These blonde, 
blue-eyed lads come from Arcadia or Messenia, 



144 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



and their open countenances are in sharp con- 
trast with the black-avised saturnine Thessa- 
lians, a contrast all the more bizarre seeing 
that the occupation of the fair southern boys 
is blacking the boots of men, whilst that of the 
swart men from the north is selling sweetmeats 
to children. 

Professor Mahaffy says that in the wilder parts 
of the Morea are to be found types equal to those 
that inspired the artists of antiquity. This is true, 
not of the Morea only, though there perhaps it is 
the most frequent, but of all Greek lands, Asiatic 
as well as European. It was probably as rare in 
the classic ages as it is now. The collection of 
busts in the museum at Athens shows that the 
diversity of types and their divergence from the 
ideal standard of beauty, perpetuated in the works 
of the ancient sculptors, was as great in the days 
of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Scopas and Poly- 
cleitus, as it is at present. One may walk about 
Athens a long time in search of a Hermes or an 
Apollo. But were they more frequent in the days 
of Phidias? In Room VI of the National Museum 
at Athens there are thirty-three portrait busts of 
the Cosmetas or governors of the Diogeneion, that 
important Athenian institution founded in the 
second century before Christ for the education of 
the Epheboi, a body of youths destined for a politi- 
cal and military career. The Cosmeta? were no 
doubt men of learning and distinction. The busts 
present various types of physiognomy and are 



TYPES AND TRAITS 145 



probably faithful portraits, but the Cosmetae are 
as far away from the models of the antique sculp- 
tors as are our head masters and heads of colleges. 
This being so, one is inclined to accept the terra- 
cotta grotesques, allowing for the exaggeration of 
caricature, as fairly accurate presentments of the 
lower ranks of society. The sausage-seller of 
Aristophanes was not unlike the sausage-seller of 
to-day. It is not possible to strike an average of 
Greek physical characteristics, but there are types 
which one familiar with the race would certify at 
sight as none other than Greek. As a rule the 
Hellene is spare of habit, for he is frugal in diet 
and his food is light and easily assimilated. 
Obesity is found to a certain extent among the 
sedentary classes, chiefly in the seaports, and to 
a greater extent among Greeks outside Greece 
than in the kingdom itself. Among the peasantry 
it is practically unknown. The greatest variety 
of types, including the lowest, but not the highest, 
is found, as might be expected, in the mixed 
population of the larger towns, where coarse 
features and heavy, lumpish figures mingle with 
the normal lightly built people. The type is more 
uniform in the rural districts and is at its best on 
the mountain-side in elastic forms and supple gait. 
When Edmond About said that in Greece the men 
pinch their waists, whilst the women have no 
waists at all, he was more intent on uttering a 
smart paradox than on stating the truth. I have 
never heard of men pinching their waists, and 

L 



146 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



many of the Athenian ladies have very elegant 
figures. Beauty of the dazzling sort does not 
exist. That must be sought at Constantinople, 
and more especially at Smyrna and Broussa, 
where, on the other hand, the ladies have neither 
the figure nor the gait of their Athenian sisters. 
There still clings to them the reminiscence of the 
waddle of the days when it was a compliment to 
say to a belle, ' ' You walk like a duck. " 1 The beauty 
of the Athenian girl, who is usually stoutly built, is 
of the buxom, wholesome, homely sort. In the 
country it is enhanced by freshness of tint. The 
beauty of the women of Mesolonghi was remarked 
in 1824, and one finds there now splendid speci- 
mens of girlhood, free and graceful in movement, of 
erect and queenly bearing. Still, it must be admitted 
that in externals the boys bear the palm, as may be 
demonstrated by a visit to the Stadium when the 
schools of Athens meet there, and comparing the 
youths in the arena with their sisters on the 
gradines. The masculine beauty of the Greeks is 
that of the young and the old, of Antinous and 
Nestor. The dignified carriage, the grand heads 
and snowy beards of some of the old peasants are 
such as one meets with among no other people, at 
least, none that have come within the author's 
experience. And that adolescent beauty which 
was the favourite theme of the ancient sculptors — 
the well-proportioned frame, the perfectly modelled 
head, nobly poised — may still be met with occa- 

1 aavTraTwl irepnraTeh. 



AN AGED PELOPONXESIAN. 



I 



TYPES AND TRAITS 147 



sionally in all Greek lands, though more frequently 
perhaps in Peloponnesus than elsewhere. In 
complexion the Greeks range from pure blonde to 
a tint darker than that of Calabria, approaching 
even the Arab. There is a pale olive tint in Greece 
which is not the olive of Spain nor of Italy. It 
has the pa tm of a fine bronze and is almost invari- 
ably accompanied by an oval face and delicately 
chiselled features. In Attica dark hair and blue 
eyes are prevalent as in Ireland, though there is 
a strong infusion of blonde ; and again, among 
the shepherds, swarthy skins and jet-black hair. 
Taking the people one meets in the streets of 
Athens, they might belong to any country in 
Europe, except perhaps Russia. There are boys, 
brown-haired with irregular features and an open 
expression, who would pass muster as English. 
I have an acquaintance, a farmer at the foot of 
Pentelicus, who has a double in another acquaint- 
ance, also a farmer, of the Wiltshire countryside 
between Cricklade and Malmesbury. But he, 
like most of the farmers, is of Albanian stock. 
They are a sturdy people, frank and hearty in 
manner, and as a class prosperous, for they put 
their savings into the land and increase their 
holdings and their flocks. Not so the Greek. His 
instincts are mercantile. If he is an agriculturist it 
is by necessity. His dream is to make money 
without manual labour ; his ideal is to keep a shop. 
It is not through lack of knowledge that he refuses 
to get out of the soil as much as it will yield, He 



148 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



will profit by improvements if they are made for 
him, but he will do nothing by himself. Put him 
into a bakal's 1 shop and he will work like a Trojan. 
His commercial instincts led him to cut down the 
olive trees which his forbears planted in Achaia, 
because, owing to an accidental cause some years 
ago, the prices of currants ruled high. So currant 
vines replaced the olives. Then came a drop, 
partly the result of over-production, to remedy 
which it has been necessary to uproot the currant 
vines ; but it will take at least a couple of centuries 
to replace the olive trees. 

For trees the Greek has small respect. He re- 
gards them in the light of fuel. Allusion has 
been made in a previous chapter to the wanton 
destruction of forests by shepherds. To this must 
be added the practice of tapping pine trees for the 
resin, used in making wine. This is done in such 
a manner as to injure and ultimately kill the tree. 
The passenger by rail between Megaraand Corinth 
may see plenty of examples of it. Again, the 
charcoal-burners are allowed to ravage the forests 
at will. Princess Sophia takes great interest in 
reafforestation. She and her children have them- 
selves planted a part of one of the hills outside 
Athens, and through her influence was founded 
the Forest Lovers' Union. There was even an 
attempt to institute an Arbor Day as in America, 
but it collapsed. There is a Forest Department 
of the Government, but it is starved and quite 

1 The Greek bakal is described in the chapter on Athens. 



TYPES AND TRAITS 149 



inadequate to deal effectually with the five million 
acres of trees and scrub which Greece contains. 
The Greek cannot be brought to see the import- 
ance of forest economy nor the evil effect of de- 
nuding the mountains. It is a part of the national 
indifference to rural pursuits. An Agricultural 
Society was founded in 1901, and several stations 
were established. There is one at Chalandri, near 
Athens, where there are some prize English live- 
stock, bought for breeding purposes. But the 
institution languishes, in spite of the encourage- 
ment and support of the King. His Majesty 
has himself set an example to his subjects in 
his dairy farm at Tatoi, which produces excellent 
butter. 

The Greeks are the most democratic people in 
the world. They have no titles of nobility, save 
in Corfu, and the Corfu noble, when he goes to 
the mainland, leaves his title behind him. Wealth, 
as elsewhere, is a power, and exercises influence, 
but it brings to its possessor no personal con- 
sideration. The Greek loves money, but he is 
never servile to those who have a larger share of 
it than himself, and his attitude towards rank — 
official rank alone exists in Greece—is precisely 
similar. There is not an atom of snobbishness in 
his composition. Court chronicles and the doings 
of ' i Society," which have such an absorbing 
interest for a considerable section of English 
people, are matters of indifference to him, and a 
journal which filled its columns with such matter 



150 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



would soon cease to have any readers. This is to 
his credit ; but, on the other hand, he owes as little 
respect to knowledge and experience as to rank 
and wealth. He stands in no awe of learning, 
and will fearlessly discuss a subject of which he 
knows nothing with one who has devoted a life- 
time to its study. Every Greek soldier is a strate- 
gist, and every Greek, of whatever calling, is a 
potential statesman, though the sole source of his 
political lore is in the contents of his favourite 
newspaper. This self-confidence, carried to excess, 
has manifest disadvantages. For one thing, it is 
a hindrance to combined effort. Where all want 
to be leaders nothing is accomplished. That is 
the chief reason why Greek enterprise in the 
form of public companies has generally proved a 
failure. A Greek may work well as an individual, 
but it is a hard matter to get him to work as part 
of an organisation, for he is loath to acknowledge 
superior authority, especially if it takes the form 
of a fellow-countryman. The absence of class dis- 
tinctions is apt to astonish the Western traveller, 
who finds his muleteer a fellow-guest at the table 
of his host, the doctor or the demarch of the 
village. The familiarity of waiters and domestics 
is rather trying to the new-comer, but he soon 
grows accustomed to it, and, indeed, it is not 
offensive. The manners of the Greek peasant 
are much better than those of his W estern equiva- 
lent, and servants come chiefly of peasant stock. 
The man in the fustanella is a much pleasanter 



TYPES AND TRAITS 151 



person to talk to than the townsman in the Western 
garb. The Greeks as a people are polite, but 
lapses occur sometimes, and they are almost in- 
variably found amongst the town traders, espe- 
cially among those who have made a little money. 
They are, however, rare. The most objectionable 
people are the petty usurers who are scattered up 
and down the land, and who are the scourge of 
the peasantry. In most cases they have acquired 
their capital abroad, notably in Egypt. They are 
inflated with pride of purse, arrogant and coarse 
in manners, and exhibit generally the worst 
characteristics of the Levant. But they are not 
typical of the nation, and it cannot be insisted on 
too strongly that the trading Greek of the cosmo- 
politan commercial centres of the Eastern Medi- 
terranean is no more representative of the people 
of Greece than was Juvenal's Grceculus esuriens in 
Rome, who probably, in the majority of cases, 
came from Asia. 

One breach of good manners is common to all 
Greeks of the humbler classes : they interrupt 
conversation. You may be asking a question or 
making a purchase, when a third party will inter- 
calate an observation, or address the person to 
whom you are speaking, without a word of ex- 
cuse, cutting off the thread of your discourse and 
leaving you helpless until he has finished what 
he has to say. This recurs constantly, and it is 
abominably irritating. Another annoying habit 
is that of unduly raising the voice when con- 



152 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



versing. It may be in a cafe or in a railway- 
carriage, but if two persons are engaged in a 
discussion which is at all animated, they shout 
and scream their remarks, effectually stifling all 
attempts at quiet conversation on the part of 
others. One may be chatting with a friend in a 
cafe, and when this occurs, the only thing to do 
is to take refuge elsewhere or remain dumb until 
the din ceases. This is one instance among 
several illustrating a lack of regard for the public 
convenience, without which life would be im- 
possible in our great Western centres. Another 
is the failure to appreciate the fact that the street 
belongs to the public, not to the individual. The 
pedestrian is forced to step from the pavement 
into the roadway for the convenience of a knot of 
people who have appropriated the former as a 
lounge. In like manner the shopkeeper makes 
it a temporary warehouse, whilst the provision- 
dealer takes a portion of it to himself permanently 
for his barrels of salt fish and olives, and, strangest 
of all, the butcher uses it as a slaughter-house. 
Less offensive are those who turn it into a kitchen. 
Towards noon and at eve, he who walks abroad 
encounters, at short intervals, the brazier of glow- 
ing charcoal in his path, and is saluted by the 
odour of the particular stew or fry destined for 
the repast of its owner. 

If the passenger on a Greek steamer thinks that 
by taking a first-class ticket he secures a little 
extra comfort and convenience, he imagines a vain 



TYPES AND TRAITS 153 



thing. There is a deck reserved for him, it is 
true, in theory, but not in practice. The third- 
class passengers find it pleasanter than their own 
quarters, and so he finds himself a unit in a com- 
pact crowd of peasants who very seldom change 
their linen, and who invariably sleep in the clothes 
they wear during the day, in an atmosphere reek- 
ing of garlic. Expostulation is useless. There 
is no real authority on board and regulations are 
a dead letter. The thing is submitted to, but 
nobody seems to see the injustice of it. The 
subject of Greek local steamers is a fertile one. 
They are capricious in their comings and goings. 
The only thing certain about their departure is, 
that it will not be at the hour advertised. As a rule 
it is much later, but sometimes the steamer leaves 
before her time and the intending passenger who 
arrives at the appointed hour, is left lamenting on 
the quay. Again, she has a humorous way of 
missing a port of call in her itinerary, which is 
disconcerting to those who have booked thither. 
The time of her arrival has no relation to that 
scheduled on the bill, so that a passenger who 
has an inland journey before him, and has made 
arrangements accordingly, reaches his port of 
disembarkation at, say, two o'clock in the morn- 
ing, instead of two in the afternoon. The passage- 
money is a variable quantity determined by the 
amount that can be obtained from the passenger. 
A stranger will probably pay the sum demanded 
in the office, and if he happen to compare notes 



154 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



afterwards with a fellow-passenger it is equally 
probable that he will be astonished, not to say 
indignant. Grown wiser by experience, he will 
make his next passage a matter of bargain. Chaf- 
fering over the price of a ticket is a proceeding 
at which a clerk in the P. and O. would stand 
aghast, but it is a matter of course in a Greek 
shipping office. The system has its advantages, 
as, for example, in the case of rival companies. 
The aforesaid clerk and another gentleman, say of 
the Orient Line, would certainly resent being 
asked by their employers to go out into the street 
and buttonhole possible passengers with a view to 
securing them for their respective companies, by 
promising cheaper rates and holding out other 
inducements. They would regard such blandish- 
ments as contemptible. There is no such squeam- 
ishness in Greece, where the approach of the 
voyager is noted from afar by the rivals. If he 
has the prudence of Ulysses he is coy to both, 
feigning indifference ; but by the exercise of 
patience and discretion, he ends by striking an 
excellent bargain with one of them. When com- 
petition is keen, in the case of small owners of 
one ship, perhaps, stories are told of absurdly low 
fares, of no fares at all, with the additional induce- 
ment of free refreshments. This has never fallen 
to the author's lot, but it is credible to anyone 
who knows the fierce rivalry which exists. Of 
course this state of affairs cannot last long, and 
the weaker purse succumbs. Rival boats leave 



TYPES AND TRAITS 155 



on the same day ; whereas if they left on different 
days, each would get the passengers for whom 
the day of departure was most convenient. But 
the Greek does not understand combination, in 
spite of his intelligence, and he is indifferent to 
the public weal. A proof of it is afforded by the 
condition of the steamers. They are dirty and 
ill-kept, although the Greek is very clean in his 
own household. The author has had a fairly 
wide experience of Greek steamers, but he has 
only met with one really well found and well kept 
up. This was due to the captain, one of the 
Canaris family, who had been educated for the 
navy. Captain Canaris had his ship's company 
well in hand, and saw that what he wanted done 
was done. But this is contrary to the general 
practice, which is to let things slide. Regulations 
are made only to be ignored, and everyone is, as 
far as possible, a law unto himself. With us, the 
police would have something to say to a cyclist 
without a light after dark. It excites no remark 
at Athens, even when he prefers the side-walk to 
the roadway. Incredible though it may seem, 
the writer has encountered a motor without head- 
lights long after sunset careering down the 
frequented road which leads to Phaleron. The 
Greeks have an expression, Romaika pragmata, 
an equivalent to the cosas de Espana of the 
Spaniards. They are unsparing in criticising 
themselves, though they do not like being 
criticised by foreigners. Neither do we, for that 



156 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



matter. They are competent legislators, but 
indifferent administrators. The best-managed 
institutions are those due to private initiative. 
To the making of laws they attach far more 
importance than to their being carried into 
effect. 

A significant change has come over the Greek 
spirit in one important respect. Formerly they 
shared the common Oriental antipathy to Westerns. 
The term skylo frangho — dog of a Frank — is now- 
obsolete. The writer remembers hearing it once 
many years ago, not in Greece, but in Constanti- 
nople, from the lips of an ancient dame who for some 
cause had a quarrel with a European. The cocona 
brought her vituperative eloquence to a climax 
with that epithet, as being the sum of all that was 
base. Truly the Greeks had no cause to love the 
Franks, who stripped Constantinople of all its 
treasures in 1204, ad majorem gloriam Dei y in 
that barefaced freebooting expedition which went 
under the name of the Fourth Crusade. And it is 
open to doubt whether the Turk was not an easier 
taskmaster in Greece and the Archipelago than 
Frank or Venetian. But the animus existed down 
to modern times. The Ionian Islanders were 
spoken of contemptuously as metrio fraught — half 
Franks. Dr. Millingen, who was with Byron at 
Mesolonghi in 1824, says in his Memoirs, the 
Greeks were averse from every plan suggested by 
the Franks, against whom they nourished a hatred 
little inferior to that they entertained for Mussul- 



TYPES AND TRAITS 157 



mans ; and Finlay in his history of events in which 
he took part, refers to the hostility of some of the 
Greek leaders towards Europeans. The treat- 
ment meted out to Philhellenes who went out 
to help the cause of Greece was not encouraging. 
The German and Swiss committees sent out in 
1822 a small regiment with the idea of its be- 
coming the nucleus of a disciplined force. Its 
members reached Nauplia full of enthusiasm. 
Most of them were students, some were officers. 
Rations were allowed them at first, but were soon 
withdrawn, and they were told that nobody not 
possessed of means should have come. They 
lived as well as they could on game and land- 
tortoises, but many succumbed, and when at last 
money came from Germany to help them to get 
home, hardly a fifth of their number remained, 
and their condition was pitiable. Byron engaged 
to take them under his protection, and a few 
remained on his staff at Mesolonghi. Their 
treatment was not due to want of funds. The 
Greek executive had plenty. Count Santa Rosa 
left his home and children at the instance of the 
Greek deputies in London to offer his services. 
He was a man of brilliant accomplishments and 
a statesman. He was regarded with suspicion 
and made to feel that he was superfluous. He 
reminded the Greek leaders of the words of their 
own deputies. Pappaflessa replied : ' ' The atmo- 
sphere of London seems to have made them forget 
what sort of men we are here." The ardour of 



158 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Santa Rosa was not damped. He served as a 
private soldier, and fell at Sphakteria righting 
for Greece. William Martin, a British seaman, 
deserted to join the Greeks, and was invaluable as 
a gunner at the defence of Anatolico. He was 
imprisoned and ill-treated for having knocked 
down a Greek notable, who in refusing him his 
ration of bread abused the English in the most 
opprobrious terms. William Martin might have 
died of want in the land he had helped to defend, 
had he not been succoured with some of his country- 
men at Mesolonghi. These are a few out of 
many instances of the attitude of the Greeks to- 
wards foreigners who came to help them in their 
struggle for freedom. It continued after they had 
gained it. Mr. Noel went to Greece in 1830. He 
bought an estate in Eubcea, which he made his 
adopted country. His idea was to educate the 
peasantry and better their condition. He reared 
for each family a stone house of two storeys, in 
place of the cabins they had occupied. He built 
a church and provided a priest for them. He 
tried to teach them to get the most out of the 
land by a more intelligent method than that of 
exhausting one patch and proceeding to another. 
He showed them the use of manure and the 
economy of a proper succession of crops. He lent 
them seeds and implements which were not asked 
for if not returned. He introduced the English 
plough in lieu of the iron-tipped stake with which 
they scratched the surface of the soil. He brought 



TYPES AND TRAITS 159 



out a Lincolnshire threshing-machine. The local 
authorities opposed it, saying it was an invention 
whose object was to diminish the part of the crop 
due to Government. The British Minister at 
Athens was appealed to, and it was allowed. But 
the demarch (the village mayor) secretly forbade 
the peasants to bring their corn to be threshed 
by it, and one night an important part of the 
mechanism mysteriously disappeared ; so the 
threshing-machine, like the ploughs, was aban- 
doned, and the people returned to the threshing- 
floor, with its studded planks drawn round and 
round by horses, a system by which a fifth 
of the grain is lost or damaged, and the straw 
spoiled. 

A similar fate overtook the saw-mill erected by 
Mr. Noel. By it more wood could be sawn in 
a day than by the old methods in a month. But it 
was always out of order. Teeth were broken, 
replaced, and broken again, and it had to be 
given up. A large portion of the estate was 
forest, but foreigners were not allowed to exploit 
their own forests, not even for their personal use, 
without permission of the Government, and the 
process of obtaining this was so slow and expen- 
sive, that it was found to be cheaper to import 
timber to a place surrounded by splendid oaks 
and pines. Once Mr. Noel was attacked by men 
armed with guns, severely wounded, and robbed 
of £600. The robbers were not even pursued. 
The nomarch (governor of the province) said, 



160 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



" We do not want to keep foreigners here, but to 
be rid of them." Mr. Noel remained in Euboea 
forty-two years and died there at an advanced age, 
recognising that he had spent his energies and 
a large part of his fortune in vain. Untiring 
patience and good-will failed to triumph over 
ignorance and malevolence. The peasants pre- 
ferred the fiscal exactions of the Government 
agents, who, by a system which turned the ten 
sacks of the cultivator into twelve, cheated the 
State which supported them. It was in their 
interest to oppose all improvement, and the 
peasants listened to their promptings. The 
villages of Achmet Agha and Drisi are the 
monuments of Mr. Noel's efforts. His case was 
not a solitary one. Mr. Leaves, who attempted a 
similar enterprise, also in Eubcea, met with a 
tragic fate. He and his wife were robbed and 
murdered. M. Lagrange had to sell his property 
at a great loss. Another French gentleman, an 
ardent Philhellene, bought land and built a village 
on the slopes of Hymettus. He furnished the 
peasants with seed and implements. The same 
thing happened — tacit enmity of the authorities, 
ignorance and ill-will of the people. Crops were 
destroyed, vineyards ravaged, but the owner 
could get no redress. He caught a marauder 
once and delivered him over to justice. The 
brothers of the arrested man fired at him from 
behind a rock and he had a narrow escape. 
Brigandage existed in Attica in those days, and 



TYPES AND TRAITS 161 



his own villagers kept the brigands informed of 
his movements, with a view of capture and ran- 
som, so that he could only visit his estate with 
an armed escort. Finally he gave it up, and died 
at Athens almost insolvent, though possessed of 
property which should have brought in at least 
^"2000 a year. 

This aversion to foreigners is a thing of the past. 
The Anglo-Greek Magnesite Company, whose 
mines and works are in Eubcea, the scene of Mr. 
Noel's fruitless experiment, lease about 4000 acres 
from the Galataki monastery and employ some 500 
Greek workmen. Both the monks and the people 
are sensible of the advantages they derive from 
the Company, and the Eubceans are now keen on 
improvements. The officials of the Copais Lake 
Company in Bceotia are on excellent terms with 
the peasantry, and are often asked to stand as god- 
father to their children, a thing from which the 
parents would have recoiled in horror in the old 
days. Their tenants, who occupy some 28,000 
acres, for which they pay 20 per cent of their 
produce in kind as rental, are eager to learn and 
profit by the methods employed on the model 
farms worked by the Company. 1 Marmor, Limited, 
an English company working the marble quarries 
on Pentelicus and in some of the islands, employ 
some hundreds of workmen, and matters run 
smoothly. The present attitude towards foreigners 
who are in Greece primarily for their own interests, 

1 It should be said that these people are largely Albanian, 
M 



162 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



compared with that during the War of Indepen- 
dence, and for many years after it, is very signifi- 
cant, and testifies to the moral and intellectual 
progress of the people. 

Nowhere is the stranger so well regarded as in 
Greece. He has a smiling welcome wherever he 
goes, and on all hands is the object of a kindly 
interest. The best place is reserved for him, and 
the daintiest morsel at table is his. The open- 
handedness of the people is embarrassing at times. 
In a restaurant he is served with an unexpected 
measure of wine, or fruit and cigarettes are sent to 
him, the author of the polite attention concealing 
his identity. Little services are rendered him 
readily and cheerfully without any idea of reward. 
Even the boys refuse tips, throwing back a proud 
little head, the sign of negation in the East, with 
a smiling, but firm, " Eucharisto " — " Thank you." 
For the Greeks are not menial, and a sojourn 
among them is a tonic after the interested servility 
and ever-open palm to which the traveller has been 
accustomed on continental journeys. Things go 
differently in the Balkan countries farther north, 
in whose cause English partisans have been led to 
decry the Greeks. These might have remembered 
that during the South African War, when it was 
England contra mundum y and all Europe was 
rejoicing over our reverses and hoping for our 
discomfiture, Greece alone gave us her sympathy, 
Greeks alone, in the person of the gallant little 
band formed by Greek residents at the Cape, 



TYPES AND TRAITS 163 



fought shoulder to shoulder with our men. 
Athens is the only foreign city in the world which 
has reared monuments to Englishmen. 1 The 
statue of Gladstone stands in front of the Univer- 
sity, and Falguiere's marble group of Byron and 
Hellas gleams among the trees of the Zappeion 
Gardens. Byron may be out of fashion in Eng- 
land, but he lives in the hearts of the Greeks. 
He is enshrined in their folk-songs. His portrait 
is in their school manuals. Only the other day 
the author discovered a poor boy from Kalavryta 
who wore a cheap picture of Lordos Byronos on 
his breast, like an amulet. An English lad of his 
condition would not have known the poet's name. 
He was a hero to the Greek. A wine-grower from 
Samos spoke of Gladstone as a second Christ for 
Greece. Somewhat irreverent hyperbole, but not 
intended as such. It is a term applied by Greeks 
sometimes to Socrates. At any rate, it was a 
measure of the estimation in which the statesman 
was held by the speaker. The feelings of the 
Greek people are still warm towards England. 
Of course, there are a few superior persons who 
join in the chorus of detraction which distinguishes 
a section of the European press, from which they 

1 There is a medallion portrait of George Stephenson on the 
walls of the railway-station at Turin, and there is a pedestal bust 
of Lieut. Wag-horn on the quay at Suez. But neither are national. 
The first expresses the admiration of engineers for a great 
engineer ; the second is the generous tribute of a great French- 
man to the genius of an English pioneer, erected long ere English- 
men bethought themselves that he deserved a memorial, which 
took the form of the statue set up a few years ago at Chatham. 



164 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



have derived their opinions. But these do not 
represent the nation. Anyone — but above all an 
Englishman— who really knows the Greeks, and 
yet can depreciate them, must either have a 
warped judgment or be very ill-conditioned. 



CHAPTER IV 



DOMESTIC LIFE 
E have seen the shepherd at home in his 



V V mandrel, a rude shieling or a goat-hair 
tent. That is the most primitive Greek home. 
The tiller of the soil is better off. The standard 
of comfort — or rather of discomfort — varies. The 
best peasant homes are in the Peloponnesus, the 
worst, perhaps, in Thessaly. Let us take the 
average and it will be something like this. A one- 
storeyed cabin somewhere between thirty or forty 
feet long. It may be of wood or stone, according 
to locality. The roof in some instances will be 
tiled, but more frequently thatched with reeds or 
maize-stalks mingled with brushwood. The in- 
terior consists of a single apartment. One end is 
occupied by the domestic animals, the other by 
their owner and his family. Sometimes, but not 
often, a low screen divides the two. Only the 
human end of the dwelling has a raised floor of 
dried and beaten clay, or of planking if the neigh- 
bourhood is timbered. The fire-place is a flat stone, 
literally the hearth. If the cottage boasts a chimney 
this is set against the wall beneath it. If not, it 
is placed in the middle of the floor, and the smoke 
escapes as best it can through holes in the roof. 




166 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



The baking, the only important culinary operation, 
is done outside in a clay oven shaped like a bee- 
hive. There are beehives, but their form is not 
that of a beehive. They are hollowed trunks of 
plane trees, sawn into sections about two feet long. 
In these cylinders the bees are quite at home. 
Their habitat in a wild state is the hollow trunk of 
a tree. But let us return to the dwelling. It is 
simply furnished. Tables and chairs there are 
none. The bedding stacked in a corner occupies 
the largest space. It consists of mattresses stuffed 
with maize-husks, coverlets quilted and wadded 
with cotton, and cushions which serve as chairs 
when the family dines, seated in a circle round the 
repast spread on the floor. There is a cupboard 
perhaps, and shelves, a long chest, but no drawers. 
There is always a large earthen pipkin for water, 
and a few smaller pots and jars for cooking or 
storing provisions. And there is always a loom. 
But that, like the oven, is outside. If there are 
trees it is placed underneath them, if possible in 
such a manner that two stems serve as foreposts. 
In any case the trees afford shade during the long 
hours the women pass at the loom, for all woven 
material for clothes or bedding is home-made. 
One all-important object must not be forgotten 
among the contents of the household. It is the 
eikon, the little picture, tarnished and grimy, with 
its lamp, carefully replenished, ever burning before 
it. It is usually a representation of the Panaghia. 
If not, it is the saint whose name is borne by the 



DOMESTIC LIFE 167 



head of the family, a copy of some stiff Byzantine 
model with long straight nose and eyes devoid of 
expression. On holidays it is decked with flowers, 
and in case of removal to another dwelling the 
greatest precautions are taken lest its lamp should 
be extinguished. There is no abode, however 
humble, without this tutelary deity, the palladium 
of the household. A touch of colour is given to 
this interior by the strings of purple onions and 
gerbes of golden maize that hang from the roof. 
Men, women, and children live together in common 
— often three generations. When bedtime comes — 
and it comes early — the mattresses are unrolled, 
and the members of the family enjoy a repose 
which would not be ours, under the circumstances. 
At dawn they rise — a simple process, for it is not 
their custom to undress — at most they throw off 
their outer clothes in summer — and the men go to 
the fields. The women, if there is no field work 
for them, spin or weave. This is all done out of 
doors. In fact the house is never used except at 
night or in bad weather. The women will loll 
against their doorways, or against a tree, and spin 
for hour after hour, or seated at their loom in 
the shade, they weave through a summer day. 
The dye for their homespun is either brown 
obtained from the sap of the plane tree, or red 
from the prickly oak — a disease of the leaf, called 
prinakokes — the kermes of the Arabs, from which 
we have our word crimson. Most peasants have 
a small vineyard, enough to make wine for 



168 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



home use. Then they rear silkworms. There 
are few districts without mulberry trees. If they 
do not spin silk for sale, they spin enough for 
kerchiefs or sashes, or perhaps a skirt. Some 
keep sheep enough to supply them with wool 
sufficient for their clothes. If they do not, they 
obtain the wool from the shepherd in exchange 
for grain. There is scarcely a cabin without an 
olive tree or two and a fig. Thus they buy 
neither food nor clothes. The luxuries for which 
they have to pay are coffee, sugar, and tobacco, 
and one necessity, salt. Sugar is excessively 
dear in Greece. Honey takes the place it holds 
with us in household economy. But honey is 
not suitable for sweetening coffee, and though 
Greek peasants are frugal, few deny themselves 
this indulgence. It is not a breakfast beverage, 
as with us. The far less costly wine, with bread, 
and perhaps a few cloves of garlic, suffices the 
husbandman until sunset. If anything passes his 
lips meanwhile, it is more bread and a few black 
olives. Bread and olives are his staple food. 
Bread is really the staff of life of the Greek 
peasant, and it is made of pure wheaten flour, 
and varied occasionally by maize cakes. If he 
keeps goats he has milk, which he consumes 
mainly in the form of yaoorti, a word he has 
borrowed from the Turks. It means sour curd, 
and is an exceedingly wholesome viand. If there 
is milk to spare, it is made into a cheese, ex- 
cessively salt and hard, and of the appearance 




DOMESTIC LIFE 169 



and consistency of plaster. Butter he knows not; 
olive oil takes the place it holds with us. Meat 
he tastes at Easter in the form of lamb roasted on 
the spit, and seldom else throughout the year. 
This is the diet of the poorest class of peasant, 
the man who cultivates land on the system of pay- 
ing one-third of the produce to the owner. It is 
monotonous, but nutritious and easily assimilated. 
It might be made more varied if he grew vege- 
tables, but he seldom has either the time or the 
inclination. Meals are eaten by the family out of 
a common receptacle. Plates are undreamt of ; 
knives and forks are unnecessary, owing to the 
character of the food. One knife only is needed 
to cut the bread. It is usually the one employed 
for purposes of husbandry. Spoons are provided 
for the curded milk, or the mess of maize, or broth 
of wild herbs. The standard of living with respect 
to food is better than that of the urban poor in 
Western Europe, but as regards the rest — the 
sleeping, for instance, and the stabling of the 
animals in the dwelling — well, the abode of the 
English cottager is not a model for imitation 
from the point of view of sanitation, but there is 
a gulf between it and the cabin of the Greek 
peasant. The peasant who owns and farms his 
patch of land and lives in a two-storeyed house has 
a higher conception of comfort and cleanliness 
than the one just described, but his home cannot 
be compared with a modest English farmstead, 
though he is probably better off than the occupant 



170 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



of the latter. The art of making a home is un- 
known to the Greek. The nearest approach to it 
that I have met with is in the islands, especially 
in Andros. One may meet with exquisite cleanli- 
ness, with beautifully embroidered bed-linen 
scented with rosemary, but never with what we 
mean by cosiness. Climate may have something 
to do with it. The Greeks are far less in their 
houses than we are, and when they are at home 
they appear to spend most of their time in looking 
out of the window. They are not given to in- 
viting their friends to their houses. It is not that 
they are niggardly, for they will gladly entertain 
you at a restaurant at far greater cost to them- 
selves. But it does not enter into their ideas to 
ask you home to dinner, even after an acquaint- 
ance of many years. They do not ask each other, 
so it can hardly be expected that they should 
make an exception in the case of foreigners. The 
cafe is a second home to them. There they meet 
friends and gossip. That is one reason, perhaps, 
why they dislike country life. It offers no alter- 
native to the home. There the hearth is the 
social centre, whilst in town it is the cafe. In 
Athens, those who do not own the house they 
dwell in seldom remain long in the same abode. 
Two or three years is quite a long tenure. Many 
people make a point of moving every year. Most 
Englishmen shrink from the idea of a removal 
and all that it implies, and submit to it with 
reluctance. The Greeks, on the contrary, enjoy 



DOMESTIC LIFE 171 



it. With us, the creation and gradual growth of 
the environment which we call home is one of 
the greatest pleasures in life. It possesses no 
interest for the Greek. Indeed, it has no place 
in his scheme of existence. The imposing facades 
of Athenian houses conceal, for the most part, 
a bare and comfortless interior, and a well-kept 
garden is rare. The reason is not far to seek. 
A garden is not made in a year, and a person 
who changes his residence every twelve months 
does not want to be troubled with much furniture, 
nor is he particular as to its arrangement, seeing 
that it will be carted away in a few months. Of 
course instances may be cited to the contrary, and 
there are delightful homes in Athens. But they 
are the exception, and they belong in nearly every 
case to people who have lived many years in 
Western Europe, or who come from Hellenic 
lands outside Greece. Next door to the house in 
which these words are being written dwells a pro- 
fessor of the University. He does not possess 
a foot of garden ground, yet he has turned his 
courtyard and exterior stairway into a bower of 
climbing plants, and his flowery windows are all 
the more brilliant in contrast with the blank case- 
ments on either hand. He does not occupy his 
house merely, but lives in it. But he is a native 
of Samos, and his taste for flowers is derived from 
the Turks, though perhaps he would not admit 
it. The foregoing remarks apply chiefly to the 
Greeks of Athens and the larger towns. In the 



172 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



matter of hospitality, for example, a country 
Greek makes you free of his house and offers you 
his best, but he would not do so if there were 
a cafe and restaurant handy, and he would live 
in a town if he could. Home life has no resources 
for the Greeks as it has for us. It affords them 
little occupation and no amusement. They like 
to eat and drink in crowds, where there is noise 
and movement. Hence the popularity of the 
Panegyris or village festival, to which the country 
folk look forward so eagerly as a relief from the 
daily round. Their instincts are too gregarious 
to allow them to appreciate the domestic intimacy 
which we prize. But though home, as we under- 
stand it, is a sealed book to them, family holds 
a greater place in their lives than it does with us. 
They make more of family events, and these are 
the only occasions on which they entertain. And 
they do not lose sight of their relatives as we are 
apt to do. They keep in touch with all, even the 
distant cousin in America, and there are few 
families in these days of emigration who have 
not at least one member on the other side of the 
Atlantic. Family affection and national pride are 
the leading Greek characteristics. 

It used to be said of Greek dress that the men 
wore petticoats and the women trousers. That is 
no longer true as regards the women. The wide 
shalvars, which were tied below the knee and fell 
in voluminous folds to the ankles, belong to the 
days when the eyelids were darkened with kohl 



DOMESTIC LIFE 



173 



and finger-nails tinted with henna. They have 
vanished with the Turks, and Greece knows them 
no more. And, let it be said here, that Athenian 
ladies are the best- dressed women in the Near 
East. They dress elegantly and quietly and with 
judgment. They are not given to the dazzling 
hues to which their sisters in Constantinople and 
Smyrna are prone, and the amazing toilettes one 
meets with in Egypt are unknown at Athens. 
They are not slavish copyists either. All the hats 
are not of one pattern and one scheme of colour. 
But they take their cue from Paris, and not even 
their fervent Hellenism can persuade them to 
adopt the chiton and peplon. " I will do so when 
English ladies wear the costume of Boadicea," 
said one. It was submitted to her that the cases 
were not exactly parallel. Were it possible to 
determine precisely the garb of the dauntless 
British Queen, the chances are that it would not 
possess the grace that distinguished that of the 
women of ancient Hellas. Moreover, the English 
do not claim to be her descendants. Certainly 
they do not speak her tongue, whereas the ladies 
of modern Athens do use a modified form of the 
language spoken by those whose forms are 
chiselled on the frieze of the Parthenon. The 
"petticoat" still exists among the men. It is 
universal among the shepherds, is worn by many 
of the peasantry, and is frequent all over Greece, 
including the streets of Athens. It is not Greek. 
It is not wholly Albanian, for the Ghegs of 



174 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Northern Albania do not wear it. It belongs to 
the Toskhs of Southern Albania, the neighbours 
of the Greeks, by whom it was adopted as the 
national dress during the War of Independence. 
King Otho wore it even after his deposition. 
Miss Armstrong, in her bright, keenly observant 
little book, 1 adverting to its feminine character, 
compares the aspect of its wearers to " ballet 
girls masquerading as brigands." It does cer- 
tainly stick out like the skirts of a ballet dancer. 
It is of about the same length, and combined with 
the white woollen " tights" the resemblance is 
ludicrously perfect. When its wearer walks it 
wags like the short dress of a little girl, and looks 
absurd on a tall, strong man like the evzonoi of 
the king's bodyguard. Its snowy whiteness is 
pleasing, but it is stiff with its redundant pleat- 
ings. These innumerable pleats are a modern 
development. The original fustanella y as worn 
in Albania and in some provincial districts in 
Greece, is more like a kilt, or rather the Roman 
tunic, from which it is said to be derived. It falls 
below the knee, and is a graceful and dignified 
garment. It is worn either with tight white 
woollen leggings, with black garters tied at the 
knee, or with greaves of red, blue, or buff, em- 
broidered over the instep, and the tzaroiikia — red 
morocco leather shoes with points turned up like 
the prow of a caique, and tasselled. The shirt 
has hanging loose sleeves. Over it is worn a 

1 Two Roving Englishwomen in Greece. I. J. Armstrong". 1892. 



ATHENIAN BOY IN FUSTANELLA. 



DOMESTIC LIFE 



175 



short jacket with sleeves hanging from the 
shoulder behind. The sleeves serve no purpose, 
so they are sometimes reduced to flat wings, or 
disappear altogether. Some provinces are dis- 
tinguished by the colour of the jacket. In 
Eubcea it is dark blue, in Thebes black, and 
in Messenia buff, elaborately embroidered. The 
jackets are all more or less embroidered, and each 
region has its distinctive pattern. On festivals 
the well-to-do come out in jackets of crimson 
velvet richly broidered with gold. The cos- 
tume is completed by the scarlet cap falling over 
on the left side, with a long tassel, blue or black. 
Among the poor this is replaced by a knotted ker- 
chief. In Thessaly the dress is much plainer — a 
loose garment of coarse black cloth, reaching 
below the knee, belted at the waist, and white 
woollen hose. In winter, hooded cloaks of blue 
or white wool or heavy brown frieze are general. 
White is the dominant note of Albanian costume 
for both men and women. The distinctive features 
of the island costume are the vrachoi and the sash. 
The vrachoi, the baggy breeches hanging in many 
folds below the knee, are worn with cotton or wor- 
sted hose, white, blue, or black, and in Crete 
with high boots of yellow calf-skin. The jackets 
are similar to those of the mainland, but some of 
them are worn tight like vests ; colour and em- 
broidery differ with the locality. The island type 
of costume extends also to the Asiatic mainland. 
Crete has preserved its costume more than any 



176 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



other island. The jacket is dark blue lined 
with crimson. Of the latter colour is the silken 
sash, which is very long, and wound round the 
waist like the Indian cummerbund. The cap is of 
black lambswool. The head-dress of the Greek 
mainland varies. In summer the peasant com- 
pletes the fustanella costume with a broad- 
brimmed straw hat. The shepherds stick to the 
small round black cap, in shape like the old forage 
cap of the British cavalryman. It is also worn in 
Thessaly and by the Vlachs of Pindus. It comes 
from the north, and has its more ornamental 
counterpart in the caps of Montenegro and 
Croatia. The white calotte of the Albanian is 
flower-pot shaped like the Turkish fez, only it 
has no tassel. The few islanders who have re- 
tained their costume wear the loose red Phrygian 
cap. 

The Albanian women preserve their costume 
more than any others : a short white jacket {kondo- 
gouni) with wide sleeves either plain or worked 
with silk — over it a long sleeveless coat (zipoimi) 
reaching to the knee. This is of white wool with 
a band in blue, black, or red. The corners and 
arm-ho^s are embroidered in the same colour. 
The skirt is also white, plain for ordinary wear, 
but embroidered for festivals, when a veil of silk 
gauze is also worn over the kerchief of yellow 
muslin and a string of coins across the forehead. 
In winter the zipouni is lined with wool — not the 
whole fleece, but locks taken from it and inserted 



DOMESTIC LIFE 177 



in the stuff. They are beautifully combed and 
dressed, and the last row shows beneath the edge 
of the garment. This white Albanian dress is 
very pleasing. The ornament is restrained and 
the whole effect is chaste, yet the flawless beauty 
of the material makes it rich. The women of 
Megara wear a jacket reaching to the hip, tight at 
the waist, open at the throat. The shoulders and 
cuffs of the sleeves are worked in gold or silver. 
The skirt is dark blue or green, lined with white 
and trimmed with a broad band of red. Over it 
is a gay apron of rainbow hues. On feast days 
strings of coins and silver chains hang down the 
breast, and the cap is trimmed with overlapping 
coins. Over it is thrown a veil of transparent 
silk in which gold threads are interwoven. In the 
Peloponnesus, some ladies still wear the scarlet 
cap with tassel of gold wire or silk attached to 
a cord of twisted gold thread, but the gold-em- 
broidered velvet jacket is now rare. In the isle of 
Kythnos the women still drape their heads in linen 
which masks the face beneath the eyes, and the 
writer saw only yesterday peasant women riding 
into Athens in a head-dress much resembling the 
Turkish yashmak. Here and there one meets with 
unexpected survivals. In the isle of Ios the hair 
is sometimes worn in a triple plait standing 
upright behind the head, exactly in the style of 
some of the terra-cotta figurines in the British 
Museum. The baker's wife opposite, standing at 
her door at this present moment, still wears the 

N . 



178 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



dress of her native Epirus, her girdle clasped 
by round bosses of cunningly wrought silver, in 
two pairs one above the other — the Homeric apyvpeoi 
^KXoi — such as one may see among the Mycenasan 
things in the Schliemann Collection at Athens. 
But the doctor's wife has just passed in a "con- 
fection " that savours of the boulevards. For the 
gay garb of Greece is fast disappearing. The 
regions in which it persists the most are the neigh- 
bourhood of Thebes and Livadia, the country 
round Naupaktos on the Gulf of Corinth and the 
highlands of Arcadia, and among the mountain 
shepherds generally. Athens, in spite of its 
modernity, is the best place for costume, not only 
on account of the provincials who visit it from all 
sides, but owing to the surrounding country being 
peopled by Albanians. The neighbouring island 
of Salamis is noted for the beautiful veils of the 
women. In the Cyclades costume has for the most 
part disappeared. In Crete it is still general, 
though one sees, alas, Cretans in the streets of 
Athens wearing English caps, and European over- 
coats over the vrachoi. This mongrel garb is the 
beginning of the end. It is succeeded by undiluted 
Western raiment, and as clothes are very ex- 
pensive in Greece, this means for the mass "reach- 
me-downs " of the commonest description and the 
black billycock, which seems to have been adopted 
by universal consent as the popular headgear in 
lands bordering the Mediterranean. The only 
distinctive dress of contemporary Greece is what 



i 



DOMESTIC LIFE 



179 



the Greeks term a blouse. It is not a blouse, but 
a tunic with a skirt which is a faint echo of the 
fustanella. It is tight at the waist, pleated in front, 
made of cotton stuff in a small check pattern of 
grey or blue and white, cheap, useful, and not 
ungraceful. It is universally worn by shoeblacks 
and the boys in the provision shops, and largely 
by the labouring classes. It is better than the 
shoddy importations, for its small cost allows it 
to be replaced, so that it is never ragged. 

The Greek cuisine is nearly identical with that 
of Turkey. The nomenclature is the same, with 
the addition of a Greek affix — pilaf becomes pilafi 
dolma is dolmades. There are a few distinctively 
Greek dishes. Perhaps avgo-lemoni may be con- 
sidered as one — eggs beaten up with lemon juice. 
It makes an excellent and refreshing soup with 
rice, and it is used as a sauce with dolmades, 
minced meat and rice rolled up in young vine 
leaves, and with sundry other dishes. Fish plake 
may be another. The fish are baked in a large 
shallow dish together with herbs, tomatoes, and 
garlic, and sundry other ingredients. The result 
is a savoury but rather heavy compound. Practi- 
cally the only fresh meat is lamb. Beef of inferior 
quality is to be obtained at Athens and in the 
larger towns, and pork in winter, when it is largely 
made into sausages, called lakonika. The flocks 
appear to be composed entirely of lambs, for one 
never hears of mutton. It is baked, boiled, 
stewed, and roasted on the spit, and as a rule it is 



180 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



skinny and flaccid, bearing only a remote resem- 
blance to the viand known to us under that name. 
But it is usually eaten with vegetables in the form 
of a ragout. No matter what vegetable is used, 
they all taste alike. This is OAving to the salsa, a 
sauce composed of oil and tomatoes. It has an 
indescribable flavour, not in the least like that of 
tomatoes, for the fresh fruit is not used, but a pre- 
serve made of pounded tomatoes and looking like 
anchovy paste. This compound and oil are the 
besetting sins of the Greek cook. He drenches 
everything in oil, and in this he differs from the 
Turk. Moreover, he cannot cook rice. The Turk 
cooks rice as it is cooked in India, every grain is 
separate, and the result is a light and wholesome 
dish. The Greek pilaf is a heavy, pasty mess. 
Charcoal is the fuel used for cooking purposes, 
and it is the best adapted to the grill. Get a 
Greek to grill some lamb cutlets — about half a 
dozen equal the bulk of a mutton chop — and he 
will turn out something palatable, as there is no 
possibility of using oil or salsa. And he will 
strew the cutlets with dried and pounded savoury 
herbs — a practice which might be imitated at home, 
as a variation from the inevitable tomato sauce. It 
is wise in Greece to study simplicity in the matter 
of food. Olives are nutritious ; curdled milk — 
yaoort — is delicious and wholesome. A good point 
in the Greek dietary is the cooked salad of wild 
herbs — radikia — an excellent tonic, but be careful 
to have control of the oil-flask or you will find 



DOMESTIC LIFE 181 



your salad swimming in a lake of oil. Then there 
is fruit in its season — always excessively dear, by 
the way, in Athens. The flavour of a new potato 
or of green peas or artichokes you will never 
know, unless you cook them yourself. The sugar- 
pea, called by the French mange-tout, for the pod 
is eaten as well as the seed, is grown extensively 
for the Athenian market — it ought to be better 
known in England. I remember seeing it once in 
a Wiltshire garden. Thinking to renew acquaint- 
ance with it in an Athens restaurant, I was served 
with an amorphous mass which tasted, alas, of 
naught but rather rancid oil — and salsa. Sweets 
in Greece are purely Turkish and are called by 
their Turkish names, cadaif y baklava, etc. Like the 
Turks, the Greeks eat young cucumbers in large 
quantities, not in salad, but with the addition only 
of a little salt. They are grateful and refreshing in 
the warm weather of early summer. On the other 
hand, they prize things which the Turks will not 
touch — snails, for example, and the octopus, and the 
cuttle-fish, which is very popular, but not tempting 
in appearance. When cooked it looks like a dish 
of ink. The long fasts enjoined by the Orthodox 
Church lead to a very large consumption of salt 
fish and caviar — not the Astrakhan caviar, which is 
as costly as in England — but red caviar, which is 
imported in tubs. This is pounded with garlic and 
lemon juice into what is called tarama salata and 
is eaten with oil. It is a distinctively Greek dish. 
The Greeks, like the Turks, have the commend- 



182 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



able habit of plucking vegetable marrowswhen they 
are quite young. They are eaten as a ragout, or 
stuffed with rice, or fried in slices. The bamia — 
hibiscus esculentus — is an excellent vegetable of 
high dietetic value. Lemon juice is squeezed into 
almost every dish and it certainly acts as a cor- 
rective to the salsa. Frugality is the keynote of 
the Greek household. As stated above, bread and 
olives form the staple food. The French traveller 
Tournefoot remarked two centuries ago, "A 
Greek will grow fat where an ass might die of 
hunger," and the remark still holds good. But 
the Greek feasts sometimes. A dinner of circum- 
stance in the provinces might be somewhat as 
follows : Tomato soup, made of water and oil, with 
slices of lemon floating in it. Boiled lamb and 
pepper pods and rice soaked in oil. A vegetable, 
young marrows or beans with more oil and lemon. 
Lamb roasted on the spit. Goat's-milk cheese, 
hard and salt. Black olives. Fruit, if in season. 
This would be accompanied by plentiful libations 
of resinated wine — a beverage whose odour has 
been compared to various things — furniture polish 
and melted sealing-wax among others. A high 
dignitary of the Church from Constantinople said 
of it many centuries ago, that it resembled the juice 
of the pine tree rather than that of the grape, an 
observation that is strictly true. To the novice it 
is extremely nauseous, and some people never 
acquire the taste. To the Greek it is nectar. He 
lauds its flavour of turpentine on account of its 



DOMESTIC LIFE 183 



alleged peptic qualities. And it must be said, in 
truth, that it is the only table beverage in Greece, 
for Greek wines are either very luscious or strong 
and heady, and only to be used very sparingly. 
The Greeks, as a rule, abstain from them altogether, 
but drink freely of their favourite retsinata. The 
red wine is the most highly charged with resin 
and is acrid. But the white is in universal use. 
It varies in quality ; some of the best is grown in 
the neighbourhood of Eleusis. It is impregnated 
with resin; it is said to preserve it, and the practice 
dates from antiquity. The fact is that Greece 
cannot produce, or the Greeks cannot make, a 
palatable light table wine like those of France or 
the Tuscan wines of Italy. 

The Greek customs and ceremonies attendant 
upon birth, marriage, and death are many, and 
some of them peculiar. The newly born Greek 
child is bathed in luke-warm wine in which myrtle 
leaves are steeped. It is then covered with a 
layer of salt, which being washed off, money is 
thrown into the water by the relatives as a 
perquisite for the midwife. When a young 
Mainote comes into the world he is rubbed with 
pepper and salt, perhaps to give him a foretaste 
of the hard life of that rugged province. The 
priest cuts a few hairs from his head, joins them 
with wax from an altar taper, and throws them 
into the water which will be used for his baptism. 
Then his amulet is put round his neck, and so he 
is started on his career. Local customs vary. 



184 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Among the poor of Athens, the infant's first 
garment is made out of an old shirt of the father. 
In Rhodes, on the eighth day after birth, its lips 
are touched with honey by a child, who must be 
the eldest of a family, with the words " Be as 
sweet as this honey." In Cyprus the cutting of 
the first tooth is made the occasion of a family 
festival. Friends assemble, songs are sung, and 
the child is ceremonially bathed in water and 
boiled wheat, after which thirty-two of the boiled 
grains are strung on a thread and stitched to its 
cap. There is no fixed limit of time for baptism, 
but it often takes place a week after birth. It is a 
much more elaborate function than with us and 
lasts about an hour. The infant is rubbed all 
over with oil by his godfather. The priest 
mingles oil with the water in the font, blows upon 
it and in the infant's face, to exorcise evil spirits, 
then takes it in his hands, holds it up towards the 
east, and passes it through the air, making with it 
the sign of the cross. Then comes the trine 
immersion. The infant is dipped three times in 
the water so that its entire body is covered each 
time. Then the priest anoints it, making the sign 
of the cross with the holy oil on the forehead, the 
tongue, the breast, the back, the palms of the 
hands, and the soles of the feet. It is carried 
three times solemnly round the font by the god- 
father, and if a boy, the priest carries it to the 
iconostasis and holds it up three times before the 
altar. There are other ritual details accompanied 



DOMESTIC LIFE 



185 



by prayers and recitations of the creed, and the 
dressing of the infant partakes of a ritual charac- 
ter, so that the ceremony is a lengthy one. What 
the person principally concerned thinks of it all 
he does not say, but he usually gives inarticulate 
expression to his feelings. Henceforward he or 
she has a name. Before baptism the infant is 
often called sideros, iron, in the hope that it will be 
strong. The male infant is a neepion, baby, till 
he is three, when he becomes pats, a boy. At 
twelve he is epkebos, a youth, at eighteen he is 
neanias, a young man, and at twenty-two he is 
andros, a full-grown man, 

Marriages take place at all seasons except the 
month of May. The day chosen is usually Sun- 
day, but the day of all days in the year is the 
Sunday preceding the Christmas fast. It is not 
fashionable now to be married in church. In 
Athens the ceremony takes place in the house of 
the bride's parents. A temporary altar is set up 
in the middle of the room. At the conclusion of 
the ceremony the priest and the couple join hands 
and walk three times round the altar, the guests 
pelting them with comfits. The most important 
part of the ceremony is the crowning of the bride 
and bridegroom with wreaths of orange blossom. 
Hence a wedding is popularly called the crowning. 
The koumbaros or best man holds the wreaths 
over the heads of the couple whilst the priest 
blesses them. He then crowns them, and after- 
wards at the time specified in the ritual changes 



186 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 

the crowns. The position of the konmbaros is 
one of real responsibility. In case of the death 
of the husband, it is his duty to look after the 
widow and children, if there are any. He is 
usually also the godfather of the first child — an 
artificial relationship with us, but not with the 
Greeks. The godfather becomes the brother of 
the parents, the uncle of the other children, and 
the tie is as strict as though the relationship were 
one of blood. It acts as a bar to intermarriage, 
for instance. 

Love marriages are rare exceptions. The 
match is made by the parents and relatives rather 
than by the parties principally concerned, though 
they generally have an opportunity of learning 
something of each other. There are certain 
established usages which, though not legally 
binding, are not to be contravened with impunity. 
Thus it is considered wrong for brothers to marry 
until their sisters have been wed. Again, girls 
must marry in order of seniority. It would not 
be right for a girl to be married whilst she had an 
elder sister who remained single. The men of a 
family are thus naturally anxious to see their 
sisters settled, and as a dowry is indispensable, 
its provision is often a matter of serious anxiety 
and the fruit of great self-denial on the part of the 
brothers, if the parents are dead. There are cases 
in which brothers have remained unmarried for 
years, and have devoted all their hard-earned 
savings to the dowries of their sisters. Among 



DOMESTIC LIFE 



187 



the poorer classes emigration is resorted to, not 
infrequently, solely with this object, and many a 
dowry comes to a Greek maiden from across the 
Atlantic. This is a bright side of domestic life in 
Greece. Though woman has not the same free- 
dom as with us, she is never left to her own 
resources. The family tie is, as a rule, closer 
and held more sacred. 

Wedding customs differ with the locality, but 
the central feature, the crowning, is never absent. 
Marriage among the peasantry is more pictur- 
esque than among the townsfolk. In remote dis- 
tricts and in the islands quaint ceremonials linger, 
some of them peculiar to the region in which the 
wedding takes place. Generally speaking, the en- 
gaged couple must not be seen together before 
the betrothal. On the day appointed the parents 
of both parties meet in the house of the priest. 
The future bride, veiled, is brought there by two 
of her friends and presented to the bridegroom, 
who leads her to the priest and asks for his bless- 
ing. Then the troth is plighted by the exchange 
of rings in the priest's presence. The couple see 
no more of each other until their wedding day. 
The wedding presents, which include the domestic 
utensils and furniture of the new home, are car- 
ried in solemn procession through the village in 
many districts. There is feasting in the houses 
of both bride and bridegroom on the eve of the 
wedding day. The materials are provided by the 
guests and relatives, and the wedding feast is 



188 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



often furnished by the koumbaros. The cere- 
monial dressing of the bride by her girl friends 
is an important function, and is generally accom- 
panied by the singing of songs bearing on the 
event. In Sparta, when the bride comes home, 
the bridegroom's mother awaits her at the door 
holding a glass of honey and water. The bride 
drinks some of it, in order that her words may be 
sweet as honey. The rest is smeared over the 
lintel, that the house may be free from strife. One 
of the guests breaks a pomegranate on the thresh- 
old. These rites form no part of the ceremonial 
prescribed by the Church, but the rustics cling to 
them. They are undoubtedly survivals of pagan 
antiquity. They vary among the different popu- 
lations. In some of the Cyclades the pomegran- 
ate is thrown at the door and thus broken. If 
some of the seeds stick it is considered a good 
omen. In Rhodes the pomegranate is placed on 
the threshold of the new dwelling, and the bride- 
groom crushes it with his foot as he enters. But 
first he dips his finger in a cup of honey and 
traces a cross on the door, the guests crying, " Be 
good and sweet as this honey. " As the bride enters 
they throw over her grain and cotton seed, and 
sprinkle her with orange-flower water. In some 
districts the bridecake takes the form of small 
cakes of honey and sesame, which are not eaten 
at the wedding feast, but sent to the guests after- 
wards. Cyprus has many peculiar customs, 
among which is the solemn bathing of the bride 



DOMESTIC LIFE 189 



by her friends, and the bridegroom by his, a week 
before the marriage, a relic of lustral rites. Mount 
Pelion and the Magnesian peninsula differ from 
other localities in the fact that the bridegroom 
is not bound to refrain from speaking to the bride 
before marriage, which invariably takes place on 
a Sunday. On the previous Thursday there is 
the public kneading of the wedding loaves in the 
houses of the parents on both sides. On the Fri- 
day the betrothed partake of the Holy Communion 
together, and "the crowning" is in the future 
home, whilst the wedding feast is held in the 
houses of both families. Among the Albanians 
there is one very important distinction. The hus- 
band receives no dowry with his bride. On the 
contrary, he supplies the trousseau, together with 
a sum of money previously agreed upon. Instead 
of the wife purchasing the husband, the husband 
purchases the wife. The wedding ceremonies be- 
gin on the previous Monday with the grinding 
of the corn, which is accompanied by rejoicings 
at the mill. On the Thursday there is the cere- 
monial bringing in of the wood for the fires and 
the baking of the cakes. The dough must be 
kneaded by a young girl, who is attired in the 
clothes and wears the arms of the bridegroom. 
The latter and his friends throw coins into the 
kneading-trough, her perquisites. It is an essen- 
tial that both her parents must be living. On the 
wedding morn the bridegroom and his friends 
proceed first to the bride's house, where he is 



190 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



sprinkled with water by her mother, who uses 
a spray of flowers for the purpose. The bride- 
groom's party then sit down to a repast whilst the 
bride is being dressed. Then there is a proces- 
sion, accompanied by the priest, to the bride- 
groom's house, where the crowning takes place. 
The best man, vlam he is called, has many 
functions to perform. The bride is dressed by her 
friends, save for her girdle and shoes. It is the 
part of the vlam to invest her with these. Then 
he has to attend her in the procession, to see that 
she does not fall off her horse or mule, for she 
rides. He must also take care that she enters the 
house right foot foremost, a matter of grave 
importance. Then he has to unveil her for the 
crowning, and the veil must be lifted with a silver 
object, usually the handle of a dagger. Finally 
it is incumbent on him to steal two objects whilst 
the guests are making merry — ornaments or 
articles of domestic use. They are, of course, 
restored afterwards. Sir Rennell Rodd suggests 
that this ritual theft has its origin in the idea of 
placating Nemesis by some material loss in the 
midst of joy. In any case, did it not occur, there 
would be forebodings of ill to the young couple. 
The marriage rites do not end with the religious 
ceremony. On the Monday the two families and 
the guests assemble to witness the eating of bread 
and honey by the newly married pair. Then all 
proceed to the village well or spring, where bride 
and bridegroom sprinkle each other with water. 



DOMESTIC LIFE 



191 



Afterwards the bridegroom offers a repast to his 
father-in-law, and the next day the latter feasts 
him in turn, together with the principal guests. 
Thus the wedding and its attendant rites last a 
week and a day — rather a trying task for the 
principal parties concerned — but the Albanian 
bride has the privilege of being exempted from 
all work, except that of a light character, for the 
first year of her married life. A volume might 
be written about the local customs which differ- 
entiate peasant marriage. Mr. Theodore Bent 
attended a marriage in the island of Santorin, 
at which priest and bride and bridegroom literally 
danced round the altar. The foregoing descrip- 
tion, however, will serve to convey a notion of the 
general features of a Greek wedding. Among 
the nomad Vlach shepherds the proceedings 
differ entirely. The bridegroom and his sup- 
porters simulate the ancient tribal custom of 
marriage by capture. They arrive fully armed 
and carry off the bride after a feigned resistance, 
and a sharp combat amid shouting and much 
firing of their long guns. These picturesque 
accessories are, of course, lacking in the nuptials 
held in the large towns, and an Athenian wedding 
is a tame affair. It loses by not being held in 
church, for the guests in the drawing-room have 
a habit of chatting all the way through the cere- 
mony. The English traveller Wheler saw a 
marriage procession at Athens in the year 1675. 
Describing the bride, he says: " Her face is so 



192 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



bedaubed with gross paint that it is not easy to 
determine whether she be flesh and blood, or a 
statue made of plaster." She walked so slowly 
that she could hardly be said to move at all. 
Wheler remarks further : " Wives go little abroad, 
and daughters never, as I could learn, till they go 
to church to be married." The Athenian bride 
of to-day is better off than her ancestress in these 
respects. That scarcely perceptible progression, 
which may be taken to signify modest reluctance, 
is still customary in some Greek villages of 
Turkey. It is universal in Egypt, where the 
bride walks beneath a closed canopy hidden from 
the public gaze ; but among the Christians of the 
Lebanon the bride is to be seen, paint and all. 

Greeks, Albanians, and Vlachs marry each their 
own folk. Mixed marriages are very rare. The 
rural population hold the marriage tie and all 
family relationships in great reverence. They are 
very chaste and divorce is unknown among them, 
though by no means rare among the richer classes 
of Athens. 1 

All who have lived in Greek lands, in or out of 
Greece, know the peculiar wailing chant which 
heralds the approach of a funeral. First comes the 
bearer of the coffin-lid, held upright, swathed in 
purple gauze and decked with flowers and tinsel. 
A boy can carry it with ease, for it is made of the 
lightest substance, purposely destructible. It is 

1 Divorce is granted by the ecclesiastical authorities, not by a 
civil court. 



DOMESTIC LIFE 193 



followed by acolytes with cross and banners, and 
the priest in coloured vestments, though of late in 
Athens the white surplice has come into fashion 
for funerals. After the clergy comes the coffin, 
carried low on staves. It is open, and the body, 
dressed as for a festival, is exposed to the gaze of 
all the world. Black clothes and white gloves is 
the usual garb of the civilian. Officers of the army 
or navy are dressed in full uniform. Ladies are 
clad in silken robes, white, and gay with flowers. 
It is rather startling to the stranger, and even after 
one is used to it, there is always something ghastly 
in this decking of the dead with the frippery of the 
living. The Greeks say that it took its rise under 
the Turkish domination, the Turks requiring the 
coffin to be opened in order to prevent the smug- 
gling of arms into the country in the guise of a 
funeral. But the Turks are gone and the custom 
still obtains. Its origin dates probably from a 
period ere the Turks were a nation. In ancient 
times the dead were clad in their finest apparel 
and crowned with a garland. The relatives do not 
accompany the body to the shallow grave, but take 
leave of it at the cemetery chapel. The clothes 
are removed before burial, and in the case of the 
rich, are usually cut up. Church dignitaries were 
carried to the tomb, not many years ago, seated in 
a chair, dressed in full canonicals. A candle is 
usually left burning by the grave in an earthen- 
ware vessel, and the staves upon which the bier was 
borne are left stuck upright in the ground. After 
o 



194 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



three years have elapsed, the bones are dug up, 
washed in wine, and preserved in the ossuary. 
Those who pay for it have the bones of their rela- 
tives collected and hung up in sacks. Rows of 
them may be seen in the pavilion in the cemetery 
at Athens. They are numbered and registered, so 
that they may be identified. The bones of the 
poor are exhumed also, but they are thrown pell- 
mell into the common charnel-house, the hair in 
many cases still adhering to the skulls. The dead 
monks in their habits in the Capuccini at Palermo, 
and also at Malta, make rather a ghastly spectacle, 
but one in which there is order and purpose. But 
there is no redeeming feature in the gruesome 
pit at Athens. This treatment of the debris of 
humanity is cynical. Not only does it lack rever- 
ence, but common decency. There is no memory 
of the past, no dream of the future. The sight is 
painful, and brings with it a sense, not of humilia- 
tion, but rather of degradation. It is to the credit 
of the Athenian press that it has more than once 
called attention to it as a public scandal. 

There are many local funeral customs, but one is 
almost universal, that of breaking a pitcher on the 
threshold when a funeral leaves the house. In 
Corfu the house is left unswept for three days and 
then the broom is burnt. Professional mourners 
still flourish in some of the provinces and islands, 
but their services are not in general request as 
formerly. The myrology or dirge sung in the 
house of mourning and over the grave on anniver- 



DOMESTIC LIFE 



195 



saries still survives, and in Thessaly there are 
women famous for these improvised laments. 
There no other songs are sung for a year by those 
who have lost a relative, and the survivors sing 
over their grave for a few moments when they pass 
the cemetery. But myrology as a profession is on 
the decline. It has always been the exclusive 
appanage of women, and its increasing desuetude 
means a loss of revenue for the female portion of 
the population. The earnings of a myrologist of 
repute are considerable. Some of them display 
real dramatic talent in their simulated grief, and 
these do not sing the cut-and-dried myrologies, 
but improvise for the occasion, and sedulously 
practise their art. What consolation the bereaved 
could ever have derived from these histrionic 
lamentations is a question that may be left to 
psychologists. They are, like much else in Greece, 
a heritage of the distant past, lingering chiefly in 
communities that have come least in contact with 
outside influences. The Suliote women gathering 
round the bier, and rehearsing by turns the 
principal actions in the life of the deceased, as 
described by Millingen and other travellers, during 
the War of Independence, is reminiscent of the 
Homeric age. The funeral cakes — kolliva — baked 
on the third, ninth, twentieth, and fortieth days 
after burial, are a survival of paganism. They are 
partly broken up over the grave, partly eaten, and 
partly given away. Among other ingredients they 
contain parsley — the symbol of death. In ancient 



196 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



times a person in extremis was said to want parsley, 
and down to the early nineteenth century at least, 
a sprig of parsley was a malign gift, signifying a 
wish for the recipient's death. White garments 
are worn as mourning in Thessaly, and the women 
go about with uncovered head and loosened hair. 
In conservative Maina the myrology still flourishes. 
All fires and lights are extinguished at death and 
are not relit for a week. Consequently there is no 
cooking, and at the funeral feast the guests bring 
prepared food. Bread and wine are placed near 
the dead, and if a man, his arms are laid by 
his side, together with an amulet to ward off evil 
spirits. Last of all, the priest blesses a nail, which 
is driven into the door. This is done in order that 
the deceased may rest quietly. The women cut off 
a lock of their hair and throw it into the grave, 
and I am told, but I have not witnessed it, that 
sometimes the men scratch their faces. Both 
actions are relics of self-mutilation as an expression 
of grief. There is a touching dignity in the last 
farewell of the Mainote men. They gather round 
the bier and cry plaintively, Adelphe, Adelphe, 
Adelphe— O brother ! O brother ! O brother ! 
Then for a few moments they stand motionless with 
bowed heads, after which they utter the same words, 
softly this time, almost in a whisper — Adelphe, 
Adelphe, Adelphe — then they kiss the brow of the 
dead and depart in silence. 



CHAPTER V 



THE GREEK PEOPLE 
HIS book is concerned with the Hellenic 



A Kingdom. Hellas beyond the frontiers does 
not come within its province. But it would be 
entirely misleading to leave it out of account. 
Many, nay one may say most of the Westerns 
who know the Greeks and are familiar with their 
language have never set foot in the dominions of 
King George. Greek is the mother-tongue of the 
Western child brought up in Smyrna or Con- 
stantinople. The inhabitants of Greece form but 
a fraction of the Greek people. From Epirus at 
the gate of the Adriatic right round to Bourgas 
on the Black Sea the coast is peopled by Greeks, 
and a Greek fringe extends along the Asiatic lit- 
toral of the Euxine to distant Trebizonde, where 
the spoken tongue still retains some of the classic 
forms. 

The ^Egean is Greek on both its shores and all 
its islands. When Byron wrote " The Isles of 
Greece" he had in his mind chiefly the Asiatic 
islands; Samos with the refrain "Fill high the 
bowl with Samian wine"; Mytilene, "where 
burning Sappho loved and sung " ; Scio and 




198 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Teos, " the Scian and the Teian Muse," as Greek 
now as they were in the days of Homer and Ana- 
creon. Still Greek are the neighbouring shores 
of Ionia and Caria. The harbourless southern 
coast of Asia Minor is sparsely inhabited, but 
Greeks are scattered through Lycia to Adalia, 
and become more dense in Cilicia, within sight 
of Troodos, the loftiest peak of Cyprus, where 
out of a mixed population of 237,000 there are 
182,739 Orthodox Greeks and some thousands 
more of other faiths whose mother-tongue is 
Greek. 

In the country behind Smyrna they stretch far 
up the valleys of the Meander, the Hermus, and 
the Cayster. Far in the interior are isolated 
patches of Greeks — on Lake Egidir, and on the 
plateau of the Axylon near Iconium ; whilst 
Csesarea, in far-off Cappadocia, is the centre of a 
large and active population whose offshoots extend 
towards the head-waters of the Tigris. 

Over on the European continent, though driven 
from Eastern Roumelia to the number of some 
40,000 by the Bulgarians, the Greeks are increas- 
ing on the Thracian plain from Adrianople to the 
Bosphorus. They till the land round Constanti- 
nople, and within that cosmopolitan city they are 
the most active element. The visitor to Pera 
finds himself in a town mainly Greek. The ser- 
vants, the tradesmen are Greek. In professional 
and mercantile pursuits Greeks preponderate. 
Across the Golden Horn, in Stamboul, where 



THE GREEK PEOPLE 199 



Franks do not dwell, he will find wedges of 
Greeks among the Turkish inhabitants. The 
Phanar, a densely peopled quarter, clusters round 
the Patriarchate. Far away from this, in the 
heart of Stamboul, the writer was once startled 
at seeing the name of Comnenos over a druggist's 
shop, in a district wholly Turkish. The triple 
fortifications extend along the base of the triangu- 
lar city from the Golden Horn to the Sea of 
Marmora, a distance of some four miles. There, 
nestling beneath the walls where fell the last 
Constantine, a ribbon of Greek population re- 
minds the visitor that he is in Byzantium. On the 
seaward face of the city, still clinging to the walls, 
in some cases using their dismantled towers as 
dwellings, he finds Greeks again in larger numbers. 
Yonder on the Asiatic shore stands Kadikeuy, on 
the site of old Chalcedon. There he will hear the 
Greek tongue, will see Greek names over the 
shops, will rub shoulders on the pier with Greek 
merchants who transact business in European 
Galata and have their homes in Asia. Farther 
away lie the Princes Islands, and there the 
Greek element is the dominant one. Beyond the 
islands, Greek villages dot the coast of the Gulf of 
Nicomedia. On the Bosphorus, the largest and 
most prosperous centres of population — Therapia, 
Buyukdere, Yeni Keui — are chiefly or wholly 
Greek, and in its waters Greek fishermen cast 
their nets. For the city of the Sultans is still, 
in its people, largely the city of the Constantines. 



200 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Three small islands near Rhodes — Kalymnos, 
Nisyros, and Leros — chiefly the latter, which was 
first in the field — have supplied most of the 
material for the Egyptian colony, which both 
in wealth and numbers far exceeds other sections 
of the foreign population of the Delta. From 
these rocks, for they are little more, come the 
pioneers who traded in the Soudan. Greek store- 
keepers were established at Khartoum when that 
region belonged to the domain of the explorer. 
Nor is Khartoum the southernmost limit of the 
adventurous Greek trader. Livingstone found 
him in the neighbourhood of the Equatorial 
Lakes. 

But it is not in commercial enterprise alone 
that Greater Hellas has shone. The Isle of Psara 
gave to Greece Constantine Kanares, her greatest 
naval hero. Scio counts among her sons phy- 
sicians of European reputation, as well as scholars 
and men of letters, chief of whom is Korais, the 
builder of the literary language of modern Greece. 
Aivali, on the Asian mainland opposite Mytilene, 
Ambelachia, on Mount Ossa, and Yanina, in 
Epirus, had their colleges and were centres of 
culture whei. Athens still sat in darkness. Epirus, 
still beyond the pale, continues to furnish the 
kingdom with some of its most capable and dis- 
tinguished men. 

Are the modern Greeks descendants of the 
Greeks of the classic age ? The writer does not 
pretend to do more than make a brief statement 



AN EPIROTE. 



THE GREEK PEOPLE 201 



based on the arguments of those whose know- 
ledge entitles them to its discussion. The conclu- 
sion of Fallmerayer that the Greek race is extinct, 
that it has been replaced by Slavs, and that, 
consequently, there is not a particle of Greek 
blood in the veins of the Greek-speaking people 
of to-day, is now generally discountenanced. It 
was refuted by a great authority, Karl Hopf, on 
the ground that Fallmerayer had relied on docu- 
mentary evidence proved to be false. Hopf also 
pointed to the paucity of Slav traces, as in the 
case of place names — an impossible condition if the 
country had been entirely repeopled by them. The 
persistence of the Greek language upholds those 
who favour the Hellenic descent of the modern 
Greeks. But philologists tell us that language is 
a social, not a racial product ; yet if the Slavs 
became the dominant population of Greece, why 
do their descendants speak Greek ? The language 
of England is that of the Teuton, not the Celt. 
When the Franks invaded the Peloponnesus in 
the thirteenth century they found Slav colonies 
in certain spots on the mountains, distinct from 
the Greeks. To this day, in the Albanian dis- 
tricts of Greece, even in the vicinity of Athens, 
the language is Albanian. The late Sir Richard 
Jebb maintained that the Greek language had an 
unbroken life from prehistoric times. The classic 
tongue was understood by the people until 750 a.d. , 
and by 900 a.d. it had ceased to be used. Between 
1 100 and 1200 spoken Greek began to have a 



202 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 

literature, and in the thirteenth century it was in 
general use. The change from ancient to modern 
Greek is one common to languages, from the 
synthetic to the analytic. Professor Mahaffy says 
that the language is that of Plato essentially, 
despite development and decay. No one who has 
a knowledge of ancient and modern Greek can 
deny this. Latin died and left a legacy to posterity 
in the Romance tongues, but Greek has always 
been Greek and is living still. As to the artificial 
reintroduction of Greek from Byzantium, Sir 
Rennell Rodd opposes that theory on the ground 
that varieties of dialect point to a direct inherit- 
ance of tradition. Moreover, herdsmen and hus- 
bandmen employ a greater number of ancient 
words than the townsfolk. This fact tends to 
prove that the ancient race has lived on in all 
its purity away from the beaten tracks. Sir 
Rennell Rodd maintains that a nationality several 
times extinguished in its hereditary seat has suc- 
ceeded in overshadowing and absorbing the 
various elements which had threatened to over- 
whelm it. Professor Mahaffy asserts that the 
main body of the people are Greek like their 
tongue, and adduces as an argument the fact that 
in the Greek colonies the barbarians spoke Greek, 
but when Greek influence was withdrawn returned 
to their own language. He also insists on the 
resemblance in character between ancient and 
modern Greeks — Athenians told him that his 
Social Life in Greece was based on studies of 



THE GREEK PEOPLE 203 



the moderns, whereas that work was written long 
ere he visited Greece. Sir Richard Jebb attests 
his belief in the undying Greek nationality, " bound 
to the old Greeks by ties of race and character 
and language. The Greek has never been able 
to strip himself of his Hellenic character, whether 
the influence was wielded by Roman or Ottoman, 
Venice or Russia, France or Great Britain, and 
it will be so to the end." 

Hellenists approach the question with a pardon- 
able bias in favour of a people who still speak the 
tongue of Hellas. Ethnologists, lacking the en- 
thusiasm of the scholars, take more cautious views. 
Though most of them allow that Greek blood 
enters into a Hellenised conglomerate, some of 
them incline to the opinion that community of 
language and tradition rather than lineage is the 
link between the moderns and the ancients. Mr. 
D. G. Hogarth points out that the broad skull of 
the European " Hellene " of to-day is still further 
removed than that of the Greek of Asia from the 
long skull of the Greek of old. Nevertheless, 
he admits that there is a surviving strain of 
Hellenic blood, itself largely contaminated, even 
in antiquity, and now mixed with that of Slav, 
Albanian, Vlach, and Turk. 

There can be no doubt that those Greeks who 
claim a pure descent from the nation which was 
conquered by the Romans in 146 B.C. overstate 
their case as much as Fallmerayer did his. Apart 
from physiological improbability, the vicissitudes 



204 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



which the country has suffered point the other 
way. The long Roman subjection, the invasions 
of Avar, Slav, and Norman, the Frankish domina- 
tion of more than two and a half centuries, the 
Venetian conquests, and the Turkish rule of 
nearly four hundred years cannot but have left 
some traces. To these must be added the many 
immigrations and intrusions of a peaceful charac- 
ter. In 1397, long before the Turkish Conquest, 
Anatolian Turks settled in considerable numbers 
in Thessaly, and early in the following century 
about six thousand families came to augment the 
colony. These people were known as Koniarides, 
from Konia, the ancient Iconium, their place of 
origin. About the same period there was an 
influx of Yuruks, the pastoral nomads of Turkish 
race who are still to be met with on the uplands 
of Asia Minor. A little later Mohamed II 
divided large districts into military fiefs granted to 
Turks who had served him and his predecessors. 
Not so long ago, two Turks, landowners of 
Thessaly, sat as members of the Greek Parlia- 
ment. It may be urged that the progeny of Greek 
intermarriage with Turks remained Mohamme- 
dans, distinct from the Greek population, but 
there must have been some leakage. There were, 
and probably still are, a score of families in the 
deme of Boeae, and a whole village near Kastania, 
speaking Greek and devout Christians, who are 
known to be descendants of Turks converted 
during the revolution of 182 1. At the capture of 



THE GREEK PEOPLE 205 



Athens in 1687 by the Venetians, thirty Turks 
were voluntarily baptised, a remarkable occurrence 
because so rare. 1 The origin of the descendants 
of these and others is now lost, but Turkish names 
are by no means rare in Greece. 

But there are two non-Hellenic peoples in 
Greece of whose presence there can be no doubt, 
since they have in part preserved their language, 
the Albanians and the Vlachs. The latter speak 
a dialect of Latin mingled with other elements. 
The Albanians speak Skypetar, an Aryan tongue, 
claiming to be older than Greek itself. This is 
not the place to discuss the origin and history of 
these most interesting races nor the dates of their 
arrival in Greece. The Vlachs principally inhabit 
the ranges of Pindus, though they spread into 
other regions. The Albanians, by the fifteenth 
century, were scattered all over the Morea, and 
to-day they form the bulk of the population of 
Attica, Argolis, and Megaris, with the adjacent 

1 Instances of Christians embracing - Islam are far more 
numerous. Many of the wealthier classes apostatised in the 
earlier years of the Turkish domination. Out of forty-eight 
Grand Viziers after the Conquest twelve only were Turks. The 
majority of Grand Viziers before the middle of the seventeenth 
century were renegades or drawn from the tribute children of 
Christian origin, many of whom attained that rank. The famous 
Barbarossa was a Greek renegade of Mytilene. In the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries many of the poorer classes apostatised, 
the Cretan Greeks, who are now "Turks," among others. The 
Turks of the Vizistra Valley, in Macedonia, are Greek in blood. 
There were many renegades in Eubcea, some of whose descend- 
ants still remain at Chalcis. It has been reckoned that at the 
close of the seventeenth century at least a million Mohammedans 
in Europe were of Christian descent. 



206 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



islands, and a large proportion of that of Achaia 
and Bceotia. They occupy the southern half of 
Eubcea and the northern half of Andros. Corinth, 
Marathon, Plataga, Mantinsea, Leuctra, Eleusis, 
Salamis — names great in Hellenic story — are 
peopled, not by Greeks, but by Albanians ; whilst 
Vlachs feed their flocks on the slopes of Parnassus. 
About eleven per cent of the population of Greece 
speak Skypetar, the language of the Albanians. 
The tongue is doomed. Military service and the 
schoolmaster are its foes. There are nevertheless 
villages within walking distance of Athens where 
the women and children understand very little 
Greek. The men are bilingual, but many com- 
munities, notably in the Morea, have lost their 
language, though not their sturdy character. Both 
Albanian and Vlach are loyal Hellenes. They 
have identified themselves with the nation and 
have brought into it an element of strength and 
stability. The Vlachs are mainly pastoral and the 
Albanians agricultural. In fact there are few 
agricultural districts in Greece where the popula- 
tion is purely Greek. Town life is, as it has ever 
been, more congenial to the Greek than rural 
occupations. It is significant that whilst the soil 
of Hellas is left to the tillage of the Albanian and 
the care of the flocks to the Vlach, the Greek is 
found in remote towns in Turk and Arab lands, 
content to follow his favourite pursuit of trading, 
amid alien surroundings. 

It is probable that Greece proper is, racially, 



THE GREEK PEOPLE 207 



the least Greek of Greek lands. There is more 
Hellenic blood in the Cyclades and Sporades, on 
the mainland of Asia, nay, even among the 
" Turks" of Crete. Compare the diversity of 
physical types one meets with in Greece, " where 
every variety of facial angle accosts the eye," 1 
with the regular features and uniformity of the 
purer-blooded Cretans, whether Christian or Mos- 
lem. The Greeks of the kingdom, generally 
speaking, may dispute this, though it should 
be a matter of pride to them rather than otherwise. 
An Englishman does not feel hurt if he is told 
that he is not a direct descendant of the Ancient 
Britons, for he knows that his mixed blood has 
endowed him with qualities which but for it he 
would lack. And it is the same with the Greeks. 
Mr. Hogarth puts it thus: " Those great and 
noble qualities which the modern Greek has dis- 
played so conspicuously this century past belong 
to him, to my thinking, in spite, not because, of 
his possessing a little old Hellenic blood. . . . 
The stock that was grceculus even in the Augus- 
tan Age has been passing down the road of racial 
decay these two thousand years, to be combined 
now in Greece with younger and ruder races." 2 

An Athenian once said to the writer: " I hate 
Ajax and Achilles and all the rest of them. 
Greeks sit down and glorify them, and do not 
think it worth while to do anything more." There 

1 D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East. 

2 D. G. Hogarth, A Wandering Scholar in the Levant. 



208 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



was truth in his statement. Though it is well 
for a nation to have an ideal, it is futile to live on 
the reputation of one's ancestors. It may be 
doubted whether cultured Europe rendered a ser- 
vice to the Greeks in persuading them that they 
were the children of the builders of the Parthenon. 
The Greek has fine qualities, but vanity is his pit- 
fall. In contemplating the greatness of the past, 
he failed to perceive the gulf which separated 
him from it. Before the nineteenth century no 
Greek would have dreamed of calling himself a 
Hellene. Since the time of Justinian he had been 
a Roman. His traditions did not go beyond the 
Pandects and the Orthodox Church. He knew 
of the Helladoikoi vaguely as pagans and giants, 
but it is doubtful whether he would have taken 
pride in them as ancestors. The ruins of their 
buildings he attributed to giants or a mythic Con- 
stantine. The writer remembers being puzzled 
many years ago at Constantinople by a little girl 
who seemed to doubt his title to the appellation 
of his creed. u You tell me you are a Christian. 
You are making fun of me. You are not a Chris- 
tian. I am a Christian, but I know you are an 
Englishman." Aglaia was quite right from her 
point of view. From the time of the Turkish 
Conquest Christianas had been the symbol of 
nationality. It was synonymous with Greek. 
Aglaia only meant that I was not a Greek. The 
term is still used in that sense in Athens itself. 
"Roman," however, is obsolete, though it is in 



THE GREEK PEOPLE 209 



popular use elsewhere, so that in coming to Greece 
from other Greek-speaking lands one has to be 
careful to substitute Hellenbs and Hellenika for 
the Romaios and Romaika, with which one has 
become familiar. The Athenian would raise his 
eyebrows if he were alluded to as a Roman, or 
his tongue as Romaic. It was not so formerly. 
Byron wrote from Athens in 1811 that he had 
made some progress in Romaic. 

The Greek clergy always kept up a knowledge 
of the ancient tongue, but their schools had little 
influence on the people, since a common literary 
dialect of the modern language did not exist. 
That powerful instrument in the revival of Hellas 
was mainly the work of two scholars, Eugenios 
Bulgares, a priest of Corfu, and Korais, of Scio, 
at the other end of Hellas. Eugenios endeavoured 
to reform the schools. His plea for religious 
toleration roused the ire of the clergy. He was 
silenced and went to Russia, where he became 
Bishop of Kherson. Meanwhile the Patriarch of 
Jerusalem wrote a tract, in which he told the 
Greeks that Heaven had raised up the Turkish 
Empire to protect them against heresy and to be 
the barrier against the West, so that they might 
escape the snares of Satan, who had led Catholics, 
Lutherans, Calvinists, and others into the path of 
perdition. This was the temper that the pioneers 
of enlightenment encountered among their country- 
men. But the work of Eugenios lived and was 
carried on by Korais, who wisely took up his resi- 



210 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



dence in Paris. He would have been impossible 
in Greece in its then condition. The foundation 
of the schools, and the sacrifices made by their 
founders, make a bright page in the history of 
modern Greece. But it needed more than en- 
lightened scholars to bring about her liberation. 
And here came in the Albanians and the Vlachs. 
The latter gave to young Greece statesmen like 
Kolettes. The former gave her heroes. The 
Albanians bore the brunt of the War of Indepen- 
dence — nay, without them it would never have 
been won. The seamen of Hydra, the soldiers 
of Suli were Albanians, and they included such 
men as Miaoulis and Marco Bozzaris. Yet these 
were all Hellenes in heart and soul. Mezzaris, 
a Byzantine satirist of the fourteenth century, 
refers to the inhabitants of the Morea as a bar- 
barous rabble of Greeks, Franks, Slavs, and 
Albanians of whose improvement there was no 
hope. Yet this " barbarous rabble" triumphed 
where the Byzantine had failed. It was the Morea 
that unfurled the flag of Liberty in 182 1. From 
the "barbarous rabble" arose a new nation, Hel- 
lenic in type and character. The indomitable 
spirit of Hellenism absorbed the newer elements 
and made them one with itself. Byzantine civil- 
isation, like the Byzantine Court, was essentially 
Asiatic. In the nineteenth century Greece became 
once more the eye of Hellas. Modern Hellenes 
need no greater glory than this. 



CHAPTER VI 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 

THE Christian Creed was unfolded to Greece 
in the first half of the first century, but it 
made slow progress among a people to whom 
pagan beliefs — or rather, perhaps, pagan cus- 
toms — were congenial. In the days of Con- 
stantine and Constans and Valens the inhabitants 
of Hellas persisted in their attachment to the 
ancient cults. Libanius speaks of being on his 
way to the Spartan festival of the Whips, a con- 
test of endurance. Valens passed a law forbidding 
the celebration of the antique rites, but granted 
an exemption in favour of Greece at the solicita- 
tion of the Pro-Consul of that province of the 
Empire. It was not until Justinian that the 
temples were affected to the service of Christianity 
and their endowments to the support of the Chris- 
tian clergy. But the faith preached aforetime in 
Galilee had put on a vesture of mingled paganism 
and orientalism. Pallas Athene was no longer 
invoked, and the Parthenon had become the 
church of the Panagia — the All Holy Virgin. 
But prelates went there on white horses, sur- 
rounded by their clergy in sumptuous attire, 

211 



212 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



and the archons entered the sacred building on 
horseback ; whilst Athenian ladies, painted and 
perfumed, and escorted by eunuchs, were borne 
thither in litters by their slaves. Then came the 
abandonment of the temples and the building of 
a multitude of churches of small dimensions, 
examples of which have been preserved to us. 
The formularies and practices of the Eastern 
Church assumed the shape they have retained to 
this day. The Orthodox Church stood for the 
ethnic unit known as Greek — or, as it then called 
itself, Roman — Romaios. It was the depositary 
of the language, which it kept alive. It was the 
coherent force which conserved the nation. Hence, 
as we have seen, the term Christian has, for the 
Greek, a national as well as a religious sense, the 
former dominating the latter. The Oecumenical 
Patriarch, as head of the Church, was, ipso facto, 
the head of the nation. When Greece became 
free this attribute naturally ceased to exist. More- 
over, it was impossible that a subject of the Porte, 
residing at Constantinople, should remain the 
head of the Church in Greece, and after many 
difficulties, at last, in 1850, the Church of Greece 
was recognised as free and independent. It is 
governed by the Holy Synod, consisting of the 
Metropolitan of Athens and four archbishops and 
bishops, who during their year of office must 
reside in the capital. Their jurisdiction over the 
episcopal sees into which the Church in Greece is 
divided is absolute. The Patriarch of Constanti- 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 213 



nople is consulted, as a matter of form, on doctrinal 
points ; but in fact the Church as constituted in 
Greece is as free from the Patriarchate as the 
Church of England is from the Papacy. The 
bishops are appointed by the king, albeit a 
Protestant. He chooses one of three names sent 
up by the Holy Synod. A bishop must be at 
least thirty years old, and must belong to the 
regular clergy. Here a word must be said as to 
the peculiar constitution of the Orthodox Church. 
The clergy are divided into two bodies, the 
monastic, or regular, and the secular. The former 
are celibates, the latter are obliged to marry before 
ordination, but they cannot marry a second time. 
The monastic clergy alone can become bishops. 
That is to say, that the hierarchy is the monopoly 
of monks. Next to the archbishops and bishops 
come the archimandrites, who are also regulars. 
Thus the wealth, dignities, and learning of the 
Church are concentrated in the hands of the 
monastic body. The bishops and a small staff 
of " preachers," whose services are chiefly re- 
quired in Lent, are paid by the State. The 
secular clergy receive no stipend whatever, but 
derive their income solely from fees for baptisms, 
marriages, funerals, exorcisms, reading over the 
sick, etc. One who aspires to the career serves 
first as a reader, then as sub-deacon. At the age 
of twenty-five he is ordained deacon, and at thirty 
as priest. Goldsmith's parson " passing rich on 
forty pounds a year" outstrips the ambitions of 



214 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



a rural pappas in Greece, who would consider 
himself well off on £30 or less. He is not allowed 
to trade, but he may till the soil, and does so, and 
one often sees him at the plough. When he is 
aged or infirm, his flock cultivate his patch and 
prune his vines for him. He is a peasant among 
peasants, possessing generally less education than 
his parishioners, who kiss his hand as a matter of 
custom, but owe him no respect. The people 
revere their Church, but not their clergy, who 
have no social standing and no learning. Theology 
means the recitation of formularies which have 
little or no meaning to them. I have heard of 
priests who cannot read, but I have never met 
one. I have, however, met several who do not 
pretend to understand what they read. Religion 
to them is a mere formal, material thing. Spiritual 
influence over their flock they have none. They 
administer the sacraments, and that is the sum of 
their duty. The multifarious organisations which 
demand the attention of a parish priest in the 
West are unknown to them. Their responsibilities 
are confined to their families, and do not extend 
to their parishioners, of whom they are the friends 
and equals, but nothing more. Yet the lot of the 
village pappas is not altogether an enviable one. 
His flock are not always ready to pay him his 
dues. Then he has to reckon with the communal 
council, a body which can make his life a thorny 
one if its members are adverse to him ; with the 
deputy of the electoral division, who can procure 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 215 



his recall if so minded ; and on the ecclesiastical 
side, with the bishops and synod, regulars who 
despise the secular clergy. Then he has often to 
contend with the res angusta dorai — his family is 
seldom a small one, and always too large for his 
scanty income. The pappas is not an imposing 
figure, with his slippers down at heel, his black 
robe frayed and green with age. You may often 
find him seated at the cafe or the bakal's — the 
latter is a tavern as well as a provision store, and 
it is not infrequently kept by his son. Yet he is 
a worthy man, and the horny palm he presses to 
yours is an honest one. He is not the fanatic one 
is apt to meet in a Spanish pueblo^ nor versed in 
intrigue, nor a drunkard like many a " pope " of 
a Russian village. His limitations are those of 
his environment. He does his duty according to 
his lights, and if these are dim the fault is not 
his. 

The town clergy must have passed the examina- 
tions of a secondary school before they can take 
orders. Consequently they stand on a different 
level in the matter of education. As they work 
among a larger population, their gains are larger 
than those of the country. But they also depend 
solely upon the fees due for their ministrations. 
Their position is therefore somewhat similar to 
that held by the " pardoner " of Chaucer's day. 
This obligation to collect their income from the 
members of their flock and the absence of a fixed 
stipend derogates from their dignity, and deters 



216 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



the better class of citizens from entering the priest- 
hood. Yet the Greeks, in spite of their reverence 
for the Church, appear for the most part content 
with the social inferiority and scanty education of 
the ministers. The indifference is not universal. 
So far back as 1844, two brothers named Rizares, 
natives of Epirus, founded a seminary named after 
them the Rizareion, with the express purpose of 
forming an educated clergy. The seminarists, in 
their black robes with the distinctive letter "R" 
worked in blue on the collar, and their long hair 
bunched into a chignon, attract the attention of 
the stranger in Athens. The Rizareion stands in 
a cypress-shaded garden, off the Kephissia Road. 
It is a well-conducted establishment, and accommo- 
dates ninety-five students, who follow a five years' 
course. The basis is naturally theology, but it 
includes Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, elementary 
physics, geography, and history, and, oddly 
enough, the principles of Greek sculpture, the 
original intention of which was, perhaps, to com- 
bat the clerical contempt for antique art, as pagan. 
In any case, a young man leaves the Rizareion 
with a mental equipment very different from that 
of the ordinary pappas. But unfortunately the 
majority do not enter the Church at all. Whilst 
still students they dabble in journalism, and after- 
wards engage in lay occupations. A wise pro- 
vision stipulates that those on the foundation must 
enter the priesthood or pay full fees for the five 
years. But these form a small minority, and thus 



I 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 217 



the object of the founders of the institution is 
defeated. There is a faculty of theology at the 
University, but very few avail themselves of it, 
and its influence on the clergy is almost nil. 
Only orthodox commentators are admitted into 
the Divinity course, and consequently no modern 
languages are required, though the curriculum 
includes the elements of algebra, geometry, 
philosophy, history, and even medicine. The 
student who has obtained his degree of Doctor 
of Theology, if he aspires to the hierarchy, must 
enter a convent. Failing this, he repairs to a 
town which is the seat of a bishopric, where, 
perhaps, he may become the bishop's vicar- 
general, or he marries the daughter of an aged 
parish priest and succeeds to his cure ; but as a 
member of the secular clergy he can look for 
nothing higher. 

As we have seen, the dignities of the Church, 
with their emoluments, are the exclusive appanage 
of the regular clergy — hieromonachoi as they are 
called in contradistinction to the kosmopapades , or 
secular clergy. The two terms may be rendered, 
sacred celibates and fathers in the world. This 
gives to the former a position differing essentially 
from that of the monks of the West. Monastic 
life, too, in the Eastern Church is quite other than 
Western monasticism with its many rules and 
orders. In the East there is only one rule, that 
of St. Basil. The only distinction between the 
communities is that of cenobitic and idiorrhythmic. 



218 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



In the former the monks live and eat in common. 
In the latter each member of the community pos- 
sesses his own establishment and lives apart, con- 
forming only to the general rule. There is no 
ascetic rule like that of the Trappists. There are 
no preaching friars like the Dominicans, no order 
devoted more especially to learning like the Bene- 
dictines, no communities and congregations con- 
secrated to a special object. The monk of the 
East does not need to have a special vocation as in 
the West. He chooses the monastic life either as 
the only path to a place among the higher clergy, 
or as a means of leading a tranquil life, untram- 
melled by mundane cares. Among the former 
class may be found men well versed in theology, 
like the present Metropolitan of Athens, who has 
studied in Germany, or of considerable adminis- 
trative ability. The latter neither know nor care 
anything about theology ; but, on the other hand, 
they are keenly interested in politics. I was never 
so sick of politics as once at the great convent of 
Megaspelion, where I spent a few days. The 
monk who acted as guest-master poured forth a 
never-ending stream of political opinions and fore- 
casts, morning, noon, and night, much to his 
delight, but not to mine. Among other things, 
he referred to an old prophecy from which he 
drew the conclusion that Abdul Hamid would be 
the last Ottoman sultan, a prediction which would 
have been fulfilled if some extremists in Turkey 
had had their way. It is true it was the year of 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 219 



the war, 1897, so there was some excuse for him, 
but it may be taken as a general rule that the 
average monk never opens the tomes of the 
Fathers, whilst he is a diligent student of the 
newspapers. The Orthodox Church has never 
passed through the crucible of the Reformation, 
and it may be that Greek monasteries, in their 
tone, resemble the Western monastic communities 
of the Middle Ages rather than the monasteries 
in Western lands to-day. It is certain, however, 
that the Greek monk is much nearer to the layman 
than his Latin brother. Recalling many, and, 
on the whole, pleasant experiences of Eastern 
convents and their inmates, this remains the 
salient impression. In the West I have never 
met with the jovial monk of tradition, but in the 
East I have. Megaspelion is one of the richest, 
as it is one of the oldest, monasteries in Greece. 
The monks are landed proprietors, but they let 
their farms. They do not even cultivate their own 
gardens, but doze away their time when not en- 
gaged in chanting the long offices. They get 
through these, lolling in their stalls in the 
cavern church in a perfunctory manner, chatting 
in the intervals, between the portions appointed 
to each. The monastery possesses a waxen 
image of St. Luke, supposed to be endowed 
with great virtues. Of far less account in the 
estimation of the monks is the dismantled library. 
True it does not contain much save a few old 
manuscript liturgies and a golden bull, in which 



220 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



letters patent are granted to the convent by the 
Emperor John Palaeologus, whose signature 
appears in spidery characters in imperial ver- 
milion. But they show with pride the rock-hewn 
cellars with their giant winebutts, each bearing 
a special name. As we wound down the ravine 
and looked back through the solemn pines at the 
convent niched like a swallow's nest on the per- 
pendicular rock wall, the bells rang out a God- 
speed to the parting guests — last sign of the monks 
of Megaspelion. And now, distant in time and 
space, we know they still drone their chants and 
doze — out of the world, yet not oblivious of it, in so 
far as concerns its politics. The Eastern Church 
has known no Reformation, but in Greece its 
monasteries have been rudely awakened to the 
fact of dissolution. There were 593 of them until 
1834, when 412 were dissolved. There are now 
some 200 with about 1600 monks. Galatake, in 
Eubcea, is one of the largest, and it has received 
an accession of riches through the income derived 
from an English mining company which exploits 
manganese on estates belonging to the convent. 
Phaneromene, a renowned convent on the island 
of Salamis, at one time converted to secular 
uses, has very few monks and boasts of little but 
its fine church. The Meteora convents in Thes- 
saly, once twenty-four in number, are now only 
seven, and of these three are uninhabited, and the 
inmates of the rest are dwindling fast. Some 
valuable manuscripts were rescued from one only 



\Undenucod &• Underuwod. 
MONASTERY OF HAG I A TRIADA, METEOR.A. ' 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 221 



a few months ago. They are visited by travellers 
on account of their extraordinary situation, perched 
on lofty rock pinnacles, some of them approached 
by swaying rope-ladders, and others in a net or 
basket suspended by a rope wound up by a wind- 
lass. Some Greeks say there are still too many 
monks, and raise questions as to their utility. But 
whilst the Greek Church draws its prelates from 
a celibate clergy, monks of some sort there must 
always be. They are more numerous outside than 
inside Greece ; the thousands on Mount Athos 
alone far outnumber those in the kingdom. They 
have long ceased to be learned ; they exercise no 
spiritual influence ; they destroy rather than pre- 
serve the historic buildings they occupy. Many 
a mosaic and fresco have vanished under the hands 
of abbots bent on making improvements. Never- 
theless one could not but regret the final dis- 
appearance of the monasteries. All who have 
visited such establishments as the great convent 
of Helena and Constantine at Jerusalem must 
retain pleasant memories of its delightful terraced 
roofs stretching over the tunnelled streets of the 
city to the dome of Holy Sepulchre, where the 
genial fathers take the air at sunset — or of Mar 
Saba in a fiery gorge leading down to the Dead 
Sea, plastered against a precipice. The writer 
well remembers the warm welcome he received 
there at the hands of the monks, delighted to meet 
with a Greek-speaking Frank in a land given up 
to wild Bedouin, and their copious libations of 



222 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



potent raki in his honour^ Such are not the 
manners of rigid Cistercians perhaps, but they 
are very human, and the humanity and frankness 
of the Greek monk have a charm. He does not 
pretend to asceticism. That is not to say that 
there are no ascetic monks. But it is a matter of in- 
dividual inclination, not a common rule, and when 
it occurs it is very real. It may be practised by a 
member of a community ; the idiorrhythmic system 
makes for individual liberty. But the Orthodox 
ascetic is usually a hermit. Sometimes he 
occupies a position similar to that of the anchoret 
in our English monasteries of the Middle Ages, 
or he may dwell remote from human companion- 
ship. The hermit of Cape Malea has not been 
seen of late years. He was well known to many 
English skippers, who dipped their ensigns to him 
on rounding the cape. The writer remembers 
to have twice seen him wave his tiny flag from the 
ledge of the precipice on which he dwelt. A pillar 
hermit for many years occupied the capital of one 
of the tall columns of the ruins of the temple of 
Olympian Jove at Athens. He had no means of 
descending to earth, and he remained there exposed 
to all weathers, subsisting on food placed by the 
charitable in a basket attached to a cord which he 
let down at intervals. Not so long ago, Professor 
Mahaffy encountered a hermit on the summit of 
Mount Ithome. He was not an ordinary monk. 
He had been a man of wealth and position well 
known in Athenian society, who for some reason 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 223 



withdrew himself from the world. Eagles would 
perch by his side, for he appeared to have attained 
the influence over wild creatures attributed to 
some Indian fakirs. They were his friends. 

A notable point of contrast between the monastic 
life of East and W est is the excess of religious 
communities of women over those of men in the 
latter, whilst in Greece they are a very small 
minority and are disappearing. There is only 
one nunnery on the Greek mainland and seven or 
eight others in the islands. The largest is on 
Tenos. There was one on Naxos which, when the 
writer last saw it, a few years ago, contained only 
six nuns, and as these died they would not be 
replaced ; so that the place would soon cease to 
exist as a religious house. And this seems to be 
the case with most of them. The preponderance 
of males over females in the population of Greece 
accounts in some measure for the paucity of women 
devoting themselves to the religious life. Under 
such conditions it is likely that most would marry. 
But the majority of such communities in the West 
have for their object social service of some kind, 
and this is as yet only very partially recognised 
in Greece as a sphere for women's activities. 
Greek nuns resemble in some ways the Beguines 
of Flanders. As a matter of fact they do little 
else but attend the long offices of the Church. 
Some of them employ their spare time in making 
exquisite Greek embroidery which they sell for the 
profit of the community. In nearly all cases 



224 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



nunneries are idiorrhythmic, each of the nuns 
having a separate establishment and ordering her 
life much as she pleases. Such communities as 
the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Sisters of 
St. Vincent de Paul, or the many sisterhoods 
of the Anglican communion, engaged in works of 
charity of various kinds, are unknown in Greece, 
and educational work, like that carried on by the 
Ursulines or the Dames de Sion, does not lie 
within the province of the Greek nuns ; so that we 
can hardly regret — and no one in Greece regrets — 
that they are fast dying out and within a measur- 
able time will be a memory of the past. 

It has been said that a Greek is always either 
fasting or feasting. The celebration of saints' 
days recurs much more frequently than in the 
West, whilst the fasts are far longer and more for- 
midable. As in the Church of England, Wednes- 
days and Fridays throughout the year are fast 
days, but they are more strictly observed. Lent 
is longer than with us, lasting forty-eight days. 
In addition, there is the forty days' fast before 
Christmas, from November 15th to December 
24th. Then there is the fast of the Holy Apostles, 
from the Monday succeeding the First Sunday 
after Pentecost to June 29th. Another fast, known 
as the Falling Asleep of the Virgin, lasts from 
the 1 st to the 15th of August. The 5th January, 
the Eve of the Epiphany, September 14th, Holy 
Cross Day, and August 29th, the Beheading of 
St. John Baptist, are also fasts. Not only does 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 225 



fasting extend over a much longer period, but it 
is more rigorous than that enjoined by the Church 
of the West. The Lenten fast means abstention 
not only from flesh meat, but also from fish, eggs, 
butter, cheese, and oil. Holy Week, called Great 
Week by the Greeks, is most stringent, scarcely 
anything but bread being eaten. The Lenten fare 
generally consists of vegetables, bread, pickled 
olives, and fruit. During the forty days' fast 
before Christmas and the fifteen days' fast in 
August, fish and cheese are allowed. The week 
before Lent is popularly known as cheese-eating 
week, during which products of milk are largely 
consumed. Invertebrates are not classed as fish, 
so that crustaceans — crabs, lobsters, and shell-fish 
of all sorts — may be eaten. With the advent of 
Lent — mega sarakoste, the Great Fast, as it is 
called — the provision shops are turned into bowers 
of evergreens and the Lenten fare is displayed in 
an attractive form — piles of canned lobster, olives 
black and green, red caviar, and festoons of dried 
octopus. The latter is an unsightly object with 
its tentacles and suckers, but the Greeks esteem 
it, though the cuttle-fish is considered a greater 
dainty. The latter is an inky mess when cooked, 
and a repulsive viscid mass when raw. However, 
it is sold daily in large quantities in the streets. 
A species of sea-urchin, resembling the spiny husk 
of a Spanish chestnut without and the yolk of an 
egg within, finds favour among the people, but 
tarama-salata is the great stand-by in fasting sea- 
Q 



226 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



sons. The traveller in Greece during Lent is bound 
more or less to conform to the Orthodox use of 
food, for the butchers' shops are closed. In Athens 
itself Lenten fare only can be obtained, except in 
the hotels frequented by Westerns and one or two 
of the restaurants, whilst the sojourner in the 
provinces keeps Lent, whether he will or no. The 
Greeks attach far greater importance to fasting 
than the Westerns. Indeed, it would not be too 
much to say that to the majority fasting, and fast- 
ing alone, means religion. Millingen and other 
travellers in the early nineteenth century observed 
that the klephts would not break their fast on any 
account, though they did not hesitate to commit 
the greatest atrocities. Pouqueville, who was in 
Greece in 1798, says that in Maina there was an 
unwritten law, by which a person eating anything 
during Lent but bread and vegetables boiled in 
water without seasoning, would be shot. Finlay 
tells a story of the traveller Bronstedt being 
thrashed by Mainote robbers because they found 
eggs in his luggage, which they had taken the 
liberty of examining on a Friday. 1 This exuber- 
ant zeal on the part of the Mainotes may perhaps 
be accounted for by a desire to atone for their 
tardiness in embracing the Faith. They con- 
tinued to sacrifice to Poseidon until late in the 
ninth century, when they were brought or driven 

1 This anecdote occurs in a note pencilled by Finlay on the 
margin of his copy of Milling-en's Memoirs of Greece, now, with 
the rest of the historian's books, in the library of the British school 
at Athens. 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 227 



into the fold by the Emperor Basil. A keenly 
observant traveller, Douglas, who was in Greece 
in 1810, remarked that a robber gang or a pirate 
crew was seldom without its chaplain. Most 
famous brigands have been pious men after their 
fashion, and in a comparatively recent case, when 
the son of a wealthy currant-grower of Patras was 
carried off to the mountains, the captor was careful 
to provide him with spiritual ministrations. It 
would be manifestly untrue to assert that this 
divorce of religion from morality is to be found 
alone in the Orthodox Church, but it is certain 
that in no other is the practice of religion so com- 
pletely detached from conduct. Piety consists in 
the observance of externals without regard to their 
inner significance. Not so much in dogma as in 
the ethos of the people is found the gulf which 
divides the faiths of East and West. Formerly the 
great theologians expended their energies in subtle 
definitions of terms, and their hair-splitting gave 
rise to polemics which shook the empire. Since, 
there has supervened petrification. There has 
been no wave of scepticism, no open expression 
of unbelief. Doctrines are subscribed to without 
an attempt to understand their intention. On the 
other hand, there has been no great movement, 
no burning enthusiasm, no strivings after an 
ideal. The Eastern Church knows neither a 
Francis of Assisi, nor a Molinos, nor a Keble, 
nor a Wesley. In modern times there has been 
one example of an idealist in Theodoros Kaires, 



228 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



of Andros, a man of great originality and vast 
attainments, who wished to modify Christianity 
into what he called theosebeia. But he drew his 
inspiration from the West where he had studied. 
And he was stifled. The Government suppressed 
his college, and the Synod condemned him to 
seclusion in a convent. The vague longings, the 
dreams, the broken visions of the infinite in the 
religious heart of the West find no counterpart in 
the East. It would have had no place for a Ber- 
nard or a Theresa. The Virgin is the Panagia, 
the All Holy, not the tender Mother, the Mystic 
Rose. The spirit of self-sacrifice has had no 
echo there, and the intense personal religion 
which has found expression in evangelical 
Protestantism is unknown. Neither the follow- 
ing of St. Francis nor the Salvation Army would 
have taken root in the uncongenial soil. There is 
no contrition, no sorrow. Take even the proces- 
sion of the Epitaphion on Good Friday. With 
its flowers and illuminations it partakes more of 
the nature of a festival than of a solemn mourning. 
Another marked characteristic of the Greek Church 
is the absence of missionary enterprise. It has 
been placed to her credit that she is not fanatical, 
and therefore does not wish to proselytise. The 
real reason is that the Greek regards his religion 
as a thing for himself, not for the world at large. 
It is a part of his nationality. It would have been 
better for you had you been born a Greek, but as 
you are not, your creed is a matter of indifference. 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 229 



His attitude resembles that of the Jew, who is by- 
no means anxious to make converts, or of the 
Turk, who regards converts from other faiths to 
Islam with suspicion. He admits Anglican priests 
to his choir, and at Jerusalem, even to the altar ; 
but where there is an altar common to the Greek 
and Latin rites, he is careful to cleanse it after 
a Latin celebration. That he is more tolerant 
to Anglican than Latin finds an explanation in 
the fact that the Anglican does not put forth 
Latin pretensions. As far as the Government is 
concerned, there is perfect religious toleration in 
Greece. The muftis of the Turkish communities 
in Thessaly are paid by the State, and there exists 
at Athens a small body of Greek Evangelical 
Protestants ; but although there is a Graeco- 
Catholic Church in communion with the Papal 
See, under an archbishop, an organised propa- 
ganda would not be tolerated for an instant. But, 
as has been said, the difference between East and 
West lies less in points of doctrine than in the 
spirit in which religion is regarded. The peasant 
believes in the powers of his patron saint and the 
virtues of his eikon, and he seeks to probe no 
farther into the mysteries of the unseen. His 
notions of eschatology, so far as he has any, he 
has inherited from his pagan ancestors, and they 
are gloomy. He regrets and pities the departed, 
but he looks forward to no joyful reunion. He 
thinks of him as wandering in the twilight of the 
Elysian fields, bereft of the genial sunshine, and 



230 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



his dirges are expressions of regret for the loss 
of the good things of earth. There is no hint 
of the possible progress to a higher, wider life 
than the one he has left. Charon still looms 
large in the popular imagination and figures in 
the folk-songs. Charos he is called, and he 
is not the grim ferryman of the Styx — only in 
one Mainote song he is represented as a boatman 
— but as a rider, austere, inexorable — the Angel of 
Death. 

Black he is, and black his raiment, black the horse he rides 
upon, 

And black the flowers that spring - up at his side. 1 

Goethe's fine rendering of one Greek song must 
be familiar to many. The mountains are dark but 
not with storm. It is Charos passing across them 
with the dead, driving the young before him, 
dragging the old behind, and carrying the tender 
babes at his saddle-bow. A song of the Ionian 
Islands provides Charos with a wife, Charon- 
tissa. The idea is gruesome. Their table is 
prepared at sunset : the linen is black, the plates 
are set upside down. Their banquet consists of 
children's heads piled high, and they are served 
by severed hands of those who have fallen in 
battle. Many allusions to Charos might be 
quoted from folk-literature. He has protean 
powers and appears sometimes as a skeleton. 
But he is always dreaded, and the popular notion 
of the after-life is much as that of the ancients — 

1 Lelekos. Epidorpion. Translated by Sir Rennell Rodd. 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 231 



a gloomy realm where the dead find a common 
meeting-place. This melancholy Hades, where 
there is neither award nor punishment, is more 
real to the peasant than the Heaven and Hell 
of which he has heard vaguely. In some locali- 
ties — Maina is one of them — it is believed that the 
dead still take an interest in the affairs of the 
world. They inquire about it from the latest 
comers, and messages to them are whispered by 
the living in the ear of the newly dead. In other 
places the belief is that they are oblivious of the 
past. But everywhere and among all there is a 
feeling that it is not well with them. Death is the 
privation of the joys of life. There are two days 
in the year which correspond in some sort to All 
Souls' Day in the Church of the West. One is 
the Saturday preceding the second Sunday in 
Lent, and the other is the Saturday after Ascen- 
sion Day. The cemeteries are visited and there 
is a general commemoration of the dead. There 
are three special services called mnemosyna, held 
by families for departed relatives — the first on the 
fortieth day after burial, the second six months, 
and the third a year afterwards. 

The custom of placing a coin between the lips 
of the dead was formerly general in the Smyrna 
district, as the writer well remembers. He has 
been told it was the same in Macedonia. The 
Church opposed it in vain, but now the coin has 
been replaced by a waxen cross inscribed with the 
letters " ioxon ' — "T^o-ou? X^o-to? w/ca"— " Jesus 



232 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Christ Conquers." It is in any case a survival of 
the ireipaTLKov — the obolus for Charon. 

The popular hagiology of the Greeks is un- 
doubtedly tinged with paganism. In some cases 
the gods of Hellas have been transformed into 
saints, in others historical personages have been 
blended with mythological beings, whilst some 
saints are pure myths. The innumerable minor 
deities of the ancients continue to exist as local 
saints. The ayasmata or sacred springs, and the 
many chapels on lonely headlands or in spots 
remote from the dwellings of man, are relics of 
paganism. Indeed, the latter are often on the 
sites of antique temples, and not infrequently 
built up of their debris. Lofty summits bear the 
constantly recurring name of St. Elias. It has 
been assumed by a facile method of derivation 
that this stands for Helios, and that such places 
mark the site of a temple of Apollo ; but, as Sir 
Rennell Rodd points out, the god did not have a 
shrine on every hill-top. Moreover, the name 
occurs as frequently in Palestine, where it un- 
doubtedly refers to the prophet of Mount Carmel. 
But St. Nicholas, surnamed Nautes^ the sailor, to 
whom churches are dedicated on the shore of 
nearly every harbour and on many a rocky islet, 
and whose church at Athens stands on the site of 
a hieron of Poseidon, is certainly the heir of that 
deity. Hagios Eleutherios, the saint who watches 
over childbirth, may be recognised as Eilythina, 
who fulfilled the same office in ancient times. 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 233 



The church of the Twelve Apostles at Athens 
stands on the site of the temple of the Twelve 
Gods, of whom they are the successors. Saints 
Cosmas and Damian — the feeless saints — Hagioi 
Anarguroi, as the Greeks call them, since they 
healed the sick without demanding money for 
their services as physicians, have their shrine in 
the sanctuary of ./Esculapius. At the foot of the 
Hill of the Nymphs, and approached by ancient 
stairways cut in the live rock marking the site of 
some cult of antiquity, stands the picturesque 
little church of Hagia Marina, with its detached 
wooden belfry. Here women bring their sick 
children, undress them, and leave their clothes 
behind in the hope of leaving the sickness with 
them. The act reminds us of the votive offerings 
of the clothes of shipwrecked mariners. There is 
another church in Athens which is renowned for 
its therapeutic virtues. It is a tiny edifice at the 
lower end of Euripides Street, and it is built 
round an antique column which protrudes incon- 
gruously from the roof. The church is dedicated 
to St. John the Baptist, but the column belongs, 
of course, to a pre-existing building, and it is in 
the column that the healing power is concen- 
trated. It is a specific against malarial fever. 
The method of proceeding is to fasten a silk 
thread to the column with wax, and the theory is 
that the fever leaves the person so doing and 
passes through the thread into the column. In 
the island of Melos, Saint Artemida, whose name 



234 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



reminds us forcibly of Artemis, is resorted to for 
aid in sickness. Formerly no sailor left the 
Piraeus without offering a taper at the shrine of 
St. Spiridion, which stands on the site formerly 
occupied by that of the Munychian Artemis. But 
Corfu is under the special protection of St. 
Spiridion. There his body rests, having been 
brought thither from Constantinople by an an- 
cestor of the Theotokos family. On certain 
festivals it is carried solemnly through the 
streets, and is regarded as a palladium, having 
once saved the island from plague. Most of the 
men of Corfu are named Spiridion — invariably 
shortened into Spiro — in honour of their patron, 
whose cult is by no means confined to the island 
nor to the poor and ignorant. The writer met 
quite recently at Corfu (June, 1910) a Greek who 
showed him an amulet from the shrine of St. 
Spiridion, and averred that since he had worn 
it he had enjoyed excellent health and an im- 
munity from troubles of any kind. He is not a 
Corfiote, but an Athenian. He has a University 
degree, has been called to the Bar, has travelled 
to Europe and America, and occupies a respon- 
sible position in a large house of business in 
London. He spoke of the amulet half jestingly, 
but he believed in it. St. Demetrius is the pro- 
tector of husbandry, and has a multitude of 
shrines, whilst Dimitris innumerable claim him 
as patron. In this relation to the soil it is im- 
possible not to connect him with Demeter. St. 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 235 



George also is a patron of farmers, as his name 
implies ; but he is a Proteus in his attributes. 
There is a festival held on the island of Paros on 
the 3rd November, about the time of the broach- 
ing of the new wine, known as the feast of St. 
George the Drunken — methystes — /meOvo-Trjs. This 
Bacchanalian function reminds us that Paros is 
close to Naxos, the birthland of Dionysos — the 
Bacchus of the Romans. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that St. Dionysios is held in high 
honour on that fruitful island, nor that to him is 
ascribed the introduction of the grape. Von 
Hahn, in his Neug riechische M'drchen, has a story 
of the first tasting of wine by the Naxians which 
is not without a shrewd mother-wit: " When they 
had drunk a little they sang like birds; when they 
had drunk more they grew strong as lions ; but if 
they drank still more they became like asses." 
Naxos was formerly the seat of a peculiar cult, 
that of St. Pachys — St. Fat — whose province it 
was to confer on children the obesity which in 
Eastern eyes is a crowning beauty. To his shrine 
mothers flocked with their offspring, and when 
the Venetian Sanudi, who ruled the Archipelago, 
made an ill-advised attempt to put down the prac- 
tice, they narrowly escaped a revolt of the offended 
Naxians. 

The Panegyris comes within the category of 
Greek religious observances, since, like our village 
wake, it is the festival of the dedication of a 
church, held in honour of the saint. The name 



236 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



has the sense of our word panegyric. It is an 
undoubted survival of the religious assemblies 
and open-air processions which played such a 
great part in the life of the ancient Greeks. It 
has still a firm hold on the affections of the 
people, and is the most characteristic and at the 
same time the most pleasant feature of rustic 
Greece. The Panegyris has wellnigh disappeared 
from the larger towns. There used to be a famous 
one held near the Theseion at Athens, but it has 
gone like Bartlemy Fair at Smithfield. Almost 
every Panegyris has its peculiar customs. At 
some a high price is paid for the privilege of 
carrying the eikon in procession. But in every 
case homage is first paid to the saint ere the 
feasting. A pappas holds the black picture of 
some virgin or saint, stiff and expressionless as 
those which served as models to Cimabue. The 
people file by and kiss the eikon, dropping their 
contribution into the bag held by another pappas, 
for the offerings on these occasions constitute a 
large and in some cases the major portion of the 
revenue of the clergy. These festivals are more 
or less frequented according to their importance. 
The Panegyris of Amorgos attracts great numbers, 
but the greatest of all is that of Tenos. It is 
held at the Feast of the Annunciation and in 
August. It partakes of the nature of a pilgrimage, 
for the Panagia of the Evangelistria Church is 
reputed above all others for its power of healing. 
So Tenos becomes twice a year a sort of Greek 



women's daxce at megara. 



[Unde 



cd &■ Underwood. 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 237 



Lourdes, and the sick, the halt, and the blind 
repair to the shrine, where miraculous cures are 
said to take place. Not only the suffering and the 
infirm attend the Panegyris, but people of all 
conditions flock to the island from every part of 
Greece. Those who cannot find accommodation 
camp in the open, and the eikon of the Panagia is 
carried through dense crowds from the church to 
the seashore and back again. A fair is held, and 
the Panegyris means a rich harvest for the 
Teniotes. The Panegyris of the island Cerigo — 
the ancient Kythera — is noteworthy. It is called 
the Feast of Our Lady of the Myrtle Bough, for 
the picture of the Panagia in whose honour it is 
held is said to have floated to the island across 
the sea and lodged in the branches of a myrtle. 
This recalls the classic myth connected with the 
island, which tells how Venus rose from the waves 
in its vicinity, and in Our Lady of the Myrtle 
Bough there is more than a suggestion of a 
Christian version of the Kytherean Aphrodite. 
The religious duties of the Panegyris are always 
followed by song and dance, and here one has 
an opportunity of witnessing the national dances, 
which have a solemnity about them that sug- 
gests a religious origin. The most famous is that 
of the women of Megara on Easter Tuesday. 
Each dancer links hands across her neighbour to 
those of the next, so there is a line of crossing 
hands, and the movements are accompanied by a 
muted song, which resembles the twittering of 



238 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



birds. The Syrtos is the most popular dance. 
The leader holds with the left hand the right hand 
of the next dancer, and so along the line, which 
winds slowly round, now one foot lifted and then 
the other, the bodies swaying inwards and out- 
wards with the steps. This is Byron's " Romaika's 
heavy round." The Clistos, closed, is so called 
from the method of linking hands across each 
alternate dancer. The Tsiamikos is danced by the 
leader only, who is an expert and displays his 
agility, varying the steps by improvised feats. 
The rest of the line linked by handkerchiefs only 
keep time, singing the while. The Leventikos is 
performed by two people only who dance apart. 

Among beliefs which are purely pagan sur- 
vivals is that relating to the Fates, Moirai, which 
is not extinct in the rural districts, and not even 
among some sections of the population of Athens. 
They are represented as wrinkled old women clad 
in black and dwelling on the tops of high 
mountains. They come soon after the birth of a 
child, some say on the third night and others on 
the seventh. Their visit must be prepared for. 
Dogs must be tied up and a table spread for them. 
It is considered well not to speak of them, but if 
they are alluded to it is in laudatory terms, as in 
Java the natives speak of the tiger as "the 
gentleman." In Epirus, one is said to bring for- 
tune, another misfortune, whilst the third spins 
the thread which determines the length of life. 
Formerly girls offered honey cakes to them, and 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 239 



travellers of the nineteenth century have witnessed 
this in the rock-hewn chambers beneath the Hill 
of the Muses at Athens, which guides show to 
travellers as the prison of Socrates. 

The new-born infant is surrounded by perils. 
One of them arises from the nereids, who are on 
the look out in order to palm off one of their own 
offspring on the parents and spirit the child away. 
For this reason all doors ought to be shut when a 
birth takes place. These changelings are not 
recognised at first, but as they grow up they 
develop uncanny qualities, and certain families 
are credited with nereid blood. The nereids are 
not water-sprites alone, as in ancient times, but 
haunt the woods like the dryads of old. Never- 
theless mineral springs are always under their 
protection. They partake of the nature of mortals, 
and stories are told of nereid brides of mortals, 
though, as in most popular beliefs, there is a 
vagueness in all that relates to them. They have 
the power of becoming invisible, and of slipping 
through chinks and keyholes. They are not 
wholly evil, but the attitude of the people towards 
them is generally that of fear. There is danger in 
certain spots during the stillness of noon, especially 
of streams, springs, and crossways. These are 
haunted by the " midday maidens," beings re- 
sembling in some sort Sir Walter Scott's "White 
Lady of Avenel." There is a blend of the satyr 
and siren in the three maids with goats' feet 
who dance in the mist and snow on the top of 



240 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Taygetus. If they lure a mortal they compel him 
to dance until he dies, or as some versions have it, 
they hurl him over the precipice. The paramythia 
or folk-tales deal with various categories of unseen 
forces and intelligences. From fear of them the 
rustic Greek mother does not like to have her babe 
out of sight. When she goes to work in the fields he 
accompanies her, slung at her back — he is always 
tightly swaddled — in an envelope which might be 
compared to a golf-club case or a quiver, which is 
suspended from the branch of a tree, or a tripod 
formed of stout sticks, if no tree is handy. I have 
often met with this in CEtolia, and the baby is in- 
variably " good," and seemingly content with his 
chrysalis-like existence. It is not advisable, how- 
ever, to express admiration for him or the mother 
will be uneasy. She may possibly point her finger 
at the child and cry " Skordo " — garlic — for that is 
one means of conjuring the effects of the evil eye. 
The child has already been provided with a safe- 
guard in the shape of a blue glass bead, a piece 
of coral, or a cornelian attached to his cap. A 
smudge of soot behind the ear is useful, but spit- 
ting in his face on the part of the admirer is a 
more efficacious precaution. For the possessor 
of the evil eye works evil unwittingly. He does 
not act through malice, but in spite of himself. 
Belief in the evil eye is not, of course, peculiarly 
Greek, but it still prevails among all classes, and 
the Church has special prayers with regard to it. 
In an unofficial way the Church also recognises 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 241 



the existence of the tutelary genius of a house, for 
when one is about to be built a pappus with an 
acolyte is in attendance with incense and holy 
water. Prayers are said, the owner, the workmen, 
and the ground are aspersed, and a lamb or a 
fowl is killed and its blood sprinkled on the founda- 
tion-stone. This is a propitiatory sacrifice, and 
the act is expressed by the verb stoichedno, from 
stoicheion — element. In ancient times human lives 
were sometimes sacrificed, and there are tales of 
such even in the Middle Ages, as in that recounted 
in the popular ballad " The Bridge of Arta." 
The stocheia, or elemental spirits, are inherent in 
objects and places. As of old, stream and fountain, 
forest and copse have their invisible guardians, 
and every great tree has its genius. Antique ruins 
and statues are especially the resort of these beings, 
and formerly peasants objected to the removal of 
statues on this account, fearing to provoke the 
wrath of its genius. Ruined castles and fortresses 
are guarded by drakones, or dragons. This 
belief is not, however, confined to Greece. The 
writer, when visiting the great stronghold built by 
Raymond of Toulouse at Tripoli, in Syria, was 
told an awe-inspiring story of a huge serpent 
which haunted the place, and the narrator firmly 
believed in its existence. A curious illustration of 
the belief in the supernatural character of antique 
remains is related by an English traveller in the 
early years of the nineteenth century. A servant 
of the Disdar Agha, the Turkish Commandant of 

R 



242 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



the Acropolis at Athens, told him that after Lord 
Elgin had removed from the Erectheion the cary- 
atid which is now in the British Museum, the 
neighbourhood was disturbed by wailing cries, 
the lamentations of the others for the loss of their 
sister. Throughout the Middle Ages and down to 
modern times among the peasantry the ancients 
have been invested with superhuman powers, 
being referred to as giants and iron-men, capable 
of lifting the great stones which mark the remains 
of their edifices. The rustic belief that the age of 
the pagan Hellenes was preceded by that of the 
dragons has been in a measure confirmed by the 
modern science of palaeontology and its revelations 
of the giant saurians which wallowed in the 
primeval slime. The tutelary genius of a house is 
sometimes visible, in the form of a cat or a dog, or 
a gourounaki — a little pig. But it materialises 
more frequently in the form of a snake, which must 
not be killed or some ill would befall the house. 
If milk is set apart for it, and the reptile becomes 
in a fashion domesticated, it is a good omen. For 
elementals, though not precisely hostile to man, 
become so if they are provoked. The kalikanzaroi 
are diminutive beings, tricky elves, who are apt to 
be troublesome. Their goats' legs point to a satyr 
ancestry. They are only visible between Christ- 
mas and Epiphany, and during that season doors 
and windows should be kept carefully closed at 
night. They are of human origin, and among 
those said to become kalikanzaroi are children born 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 243 



on Christmas Day, which is considered as pre- 
sumptuous. Some supernatural beings are wholly 
malignant. The Lamia takes the form of a 
hideous woman thirsting for blood. The Evil One 
is called Ho Mavros — the " black one," and in 
Maina a black dog is said sometimes to emerge from 
the cave on Cape Matapan, the Gate of Hades of the 
ancients, so that the black dog may be regarded 
as a modern representative of Cerberus. A preva- 
lent belief regarding ancient tumuli is that they 
contain treasure and are guarded by genii in the 
form of black men. Of such is the Arabou Magoula 
— the Black Man's Mound at Megalopolis, which 
was excavated by members of the British School at 
Athens a few years ago. In Greece, as in Turkey, 
the term Arab includes negroes. The gruesome 
superstition of the vampire — vourkolakes — is not 
confined to Greece, but formerly held universal 
sway over the minds of the people. It has been 
made the subject of a whole literature and can 
only be briefly alluded to here. Various means 
were resorted to in order to rid a locality of a 
vampire. Crete enjoyed a bad pre-eminence as 
the home of these hideous beings. Spectres of 
the dead have always been prominent among 
popular beliefs, and various means of laying them 
are prescribed. The Mainotes say that a mur- 
dered man will walk the earth until he has been 
avenged. Naxos was afflicted with an epidemic 
of spectral visitors from the year 1830 to 1835, 
the people alleging as a reason that the dead had 



244 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



become so numerous as to overpower Charos and 
escape from Hades. 

Among minor superstitions are those which 
regulate the little things of life — the proper time to 
cut the nails, to pay visits, and the like. Tues- 
day, not Friday, is the unlucky day. The Greeks 
of Turkey say that it is because Constantinople 
was taken on that day, but it is probably of older 
date. The howling of a dog, as among other 
peoples, denotes death, but the omen only holds 
true if the dog's head is turned away from the 
house. That it is unlucky to meet a priest the 
first thing on leaving the house is a belief which 
is common to other countries. Soap must not be 
borrowed of an evening, nor must an egg go out 
of the house after sunset, otherwise the wine will 
turn sour and there will be trouble with the 
poultry. Bread should not be tasted during 
sowing and reaping, or there is risk of a bad har- 
vest. There are other omens and beliefs con- 
nected with bad husbandry. The ilex is said to 
have been the tree which furnished the wood 
of the cross. The other trees turned the edge of 
the axe or bent away from the stroke, but the ilex 
yielded. The Greek woodman therefore shuns 
it. He will not touch it with his axe, neither use 
its branches for fuel. This legend is probably 
a foreign importation, Teutonic or Slavonian, but 
the divination by the bones of animals is almost 
certainly derived from classic precedent. Millin- 
gen gives a graphic account of an instance which 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 245 



came under his observation during the War of 
Independence. It was on the eve of a battle, 
19th April, 1825. At supper the right shoulder- 
blade of the lamb was handed to Vattini. Placing 
it before the candle, he attentively considered the 
outlines presented by the vascular system of the 
diaphanous portion of the bone. Then in solemn 
tones he said, " Brethren, the enemy is preparing 
against us ; much Greek blood will be spilled, but 
two considerable tombs will be erected by the 
Turks." All the old Klephts examined the bone 
and pronounced it to be true. The appearances 
of their habitual augury were too plain to be mis- 
taken. Women wise in foretelling the future still 
exist, notably in Thessaly. The gift is usually 
hereditary. Like the augurs of antiquity, they 
base predictions on the flight of birds. The bird 
always occupied a large place in the imagina- 
tion of the ancients. The eagle of Zeus, the 
peacock of Hera, the owl of Pallas Athene, the 
doves of Aphrodite, the myth of Halcyon had 
their counterparts in human life — in Anacreon's 
dove and Lesbia's sparrow. The swallow is, as 
it ever was, a favourite. Athena^us quotes a song- 
sung by the boys of Rhodes in his time. Greek 
boys sing one to-day, the beginning of which has 
almost identical words : " She has come, she has 
come, the swallow, bringing the spring and fine 
weather." And so is the end : " However little 
you give, it will be much. Open, open thy door 
to the swallow." 



246 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



The Rhodian boy asked two thousand years 
ago for a kanastron y a rush-basket of fresh cheese, 
precisely the receptacle used in the islands to-day. 

The bird plays a great part in modern popular 
song. It receives the confidences of the lover, 
the last message of the warrior to his loved ones 
at home. Here is a song of Laconia. It is 
supposed to be on the lips of a young Klepht. 
" Birds, fly away ; farewell. If you go far hence, 
to my country, remember that an apple tree 
stands before my dwelling. Rest on the rosy- 
flowered branches. And when she whom I love 
appears, greet her, and tell her of our old love. 
You will tell her to await me no more, for Charon 
has taken me at a turn in the road, and holds me 
in the heart of the black abyss, far from wife 
and children." A heritage of ancient Hellas also 
is the peopling of all external nature with the 
stoicheiciy the tutelary deities of rock and rill. 
Storms are attributed to elemental spirits at strife. 
Church-bells are rung to frighten them away. 
The whirlwind is their work, and rustic dames and 
greybeards will mutter " Meli-gala" — honey and 
milk — as a talisman. Of old, libations of honey 
were offered to the Furies. A thunderbolt is "the 
starry axe." An earthquake is expressed in some 
places by the words "God is shaking his hair," 
the nod of Zeus. 

The personification of the moods of Nature 
constantly recurs in everyday intercourse, as in 
the expression " Vrechei ho Theos" — God rains, 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 247 



where we should say, it is raining. In times of 
drought a little girl, who must be an orphan, 
as being more likely to obtain the blessings of 
Heaven, is clad in a vesture of leaves and crowned 
with flowers. Accompanied by other children 
singing as they go, Perperouna, so she is named 
for the occasion, makes the round of the village, 
the inmates of every household sprinkling a few 
drops of water on her head. This quaint and 
pretty form of invocation is the prayer for rain. It 
was formerly a common practice to make passes 
in the air with a black-handled knife during a 
storm in order to " cut it." There appears to be 
peculiar virtue in the black handle, for a black- 
handled knife placed under the pillow is accounted 
a specific against nightmare. 

These beliefs and customs, the legacy of remote 
ages, do not hinder the Greeks from devoted 
attachment to their Church, which holds the first 
place in their hearts. A Greek does not easily 
change his nationality and there are very few in- 
stances of his having done so, but in none of these 
has he changed his creed. He has always re- 
mained faithful to that, although in the days of 
Turkish rule, when the Porte sold the Church 
dignities to the highest bidder, the clergy were 
not always the friends of the people. In too many 
cases the higher clergy were rapacious and oppres- 
sive, purchasing impunity from Constantinople. 
They vindicated themselves nobly, however, by 
their conduct during the War of Independence. 



248 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Names like those of Germanos, Pappaflessa, and 
Diakos are written on the imperishable roll of 
heroes, and in free Greece the patriotism of the 
clergy is unquestionable. 

The learned Dr. Neale and other liturgiologists 
have given an account of the offices of the Greek 
Church. To their works must be referred those 
who desire to learn about them. The absence of 
the sermon would strike the Englishman, and 
perhaps some would count it an advantage. The 
relegation of the female portion of the congrega- 
tion to side aisles or galleries and the total absence 
of seats are features strange to the Western. The 
Greek never sits down in church and he stands to 
pray. There are stalls along the walls of some 
churches, but the writer has never seen in Greece 
the crutches or leaning staves which are used in 
the churches in Palestine. The total absence 
of statues and images is compensated by the 
eikons or pictures of saints, most numerous on the 
iconostasis, which takes the place of the rood-loft 
of the West. It is a solid screen which completely 
shuts off the sacrarium from the body of the 
church. 

Mention has been made of the procession on 
Good Friday — on Great Friday, as the Greeks call 
it — which with military bands and bengal lights is 
of too festive a character for the occasion in 
Western eyes. The crowning function of the year 
is, of course, the celebration of Easter. At Athens 
a platform is erected in the square in front of the 



FAITH AND FOLK-LORE 249 



cathedral, and at midnight the Metropolitan, in 
vestments of cloth of gold and mitre blazing with 
jewels, takes his place upon it and utters the words 
X/oio-ro? avearri] — " Christ is risen." The people 
shout in response, "AXnOws avetrni — " Verily He 
is risen," amid salvoes of artillery and the hiss of 
rockets, and for three days the streets resound to 
the detonations of crackers and petards. Prominent 
among the distinctive ceremonies of the Greek 
Church is the casting of the cross into the water at 
Epiphany. At places on the coast, it is thrown 
into the sea by the bishop, if there is one ; if not, 
by the highest member of the local clergy. It is 
accounted an honour to be the one to recover it, 
and as the Greeks are usually expert swimmers, 
not a few of the spectators dive after it. Some 
resolution is needed, for a plunge into the sea in 
January is a chilly experience, even in Greece. 
Strangers cannot fail to remark the people crossing 
themselves when they pass a church. Often it is 
the only indication of some tiny edifice unnoticed 
by the casual visitor, but known to the inhabitants. 
It is done not only by people on foot, but by those 
in vehicles. In Athens the electric tramcars have 
a stopping-place by the cathedral, and most of the 
passengers cross themselves rapidly, not once, but 
several times. 

The Greeks have been reproached sometimes 
with confining themselves to the merely external 
observances of their religion. But the writer has 
met with pupils of the Gymnasia, destined for 



250 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



a secular career, and grappling with the over- 
loaded curriculum of the Greek schools, who have 
displayed a knowledge of the New Testament more 
accurate and more extensive than that of the 
average English public-school boy, and it was an 
interesting experience to hear the Scriptures dis- 
cussed in their own tongue. 

There is a diminutive church in Athens — a gem 
of Byzantine architecture — standing by the side of 
the cathedral, and popularly though erroneously 
called the old Metropolis. Its plan and outlines 
are those of an edifice dedicated to Christian wor- 
ship, but it is built of fragments from the fanes of 
an earlier faith. Pagan emblems and the figures 
of pagan deities adorn its walls. This little church 
of St. Eleutherios in a manner symbolises the 
religion of the Greeks — essentially Orthodox, yet 
containing adventitious elements derived from the 
pagan Hellenes. 

No less a man than Ernest Renan has said, 
Greece never was seriously Christian — nor is she 
so to-day. This is true in so far as concerns the 
emotional and personal religion which is a purely 
Western development. But the Greek might 
retort that this is not Christianity. As he under- 
stands it, certainly it is not. 



CHAPTER VII 



EDUCATION 



DUCATION in Greece is a department of 



I > the State under the supervision of the 
Ministry of Public Instruction. There are three 
grades of schools — Demotic, Hellenic, and the 
Gymnasia. The course lasts six years in the first, 
three in the second, and four in the last. Ele- 
mentary education is compulsory, and every child 
is supposed to attend a full course of the Demotic 
Schools, though the law is not strictly observed, 
especially in the case of girls. Illiteracy, how- 
ever, is becoming rarer every year. It is most 
prevalent in Thessaly, especially in the northern 
districts near the Turkish frontier. Trikala gets 
less than three per cent of its population to 
school. The Peloponnesus is the best-educated 
portion of Greece, if school attendance is taken 
as a criterion, and Laconia stands highest as far 
as boys are concerned. As regards girls, Attica 
would probably take the lead, owing to its con- 
taining Athens and the Piraeus, where facilities 
for female education are greater than elsewhere. 
The child is admitted to the Demotic School at the 
age of six. There are six classes corresponding 




252 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



with each year of the course. The first three 
years are devoted to reading, writing, and arith- 
metic, elementary history and geography. The 
Greek language, both ancient and modern, is 
taught throughout the course, as well as drawing 
and singing, and needlework to the girls. The 
ancient history of Greece is taken in the third 
year, and the modern history in the fourth. In 
the fifth and sixth years Xenophon and JEsop 
are read, and the course includes elementary 
geometry, botany, and geology. Three hours a 
week are devoted to gymnastics, long walks are 
taken once a week, and swimming is taught where 
possible. Attendance at the Hellenic Schools is 
voluntary, and, unlike the Demotic Schools, they 
are not free. The fees are, however, nominal, 
about seven shillings a year. The pupil must 
provide his books — a heavier item than the fees. 
He enters at twelve and remains three years. 
There are from twenty-seven to thirty working 
hours a week, and the course includes mathe- 
matics, physics, geography, and Greek, ancient 
and modern. Two hours a week are given to 
French and one hour to Latin in the third year. 
Gymnastics are compulsory unless forbidden by 
a medical certificate. The Hellenic School com- 
pletes the ordinary education of the boy intended 
for business. If he is going into a profession or 
intends to qualify for the higher branches of the 
Civil Service, he proceeds to a Gymnasium, which 
is a feeder of the University, though as a matter 



EDUCATION 253 



of fact many Gymnasium pupils engage in com- 
mercial pursuits. Boys are eligible at the age of 
fifteen, provided they have passed the examina- 
tion of the Hellenic Schools. They remain at the 
Gymnasium four years. The fees amount to 
twenty-five drachmas (£i) a year, though the 
books cost considerably more. The working 
hours are from thirty-one to thirty-five a week, 
ten of which are given to ancient Greek. The 
more difficult authors are read, including Homer, 
JEschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Thucydides, and 
the orators. The course provides for advanced 
Latin and a progressive reading of authors, 
beginning with Cassar and Cornelius Nepos, and 
going on to Livy, Sallust, Cicero, Ovid, Horace, 
and Virgil. The mathematical course includes 
trigonometry. Philosophy is taken much in the 
same way as in a French Lycee, and is accom- 
panied by the teaching of formal logic. Physical 
science is represented by courses of botany and 
zoology. The history of Europe is taught down 
to 1 815, and in the last year the geography of 
the world. In addition to this there is a course 
of sacred history and theology, and three hours 
a week are given to the French language. Gym- 
nastics occupy five hours a week. 

The scholastic year for schools of all grades 
begins on the 14th September and ends on the 
14th June. There is a short vacation at Easter. 
There are five training colleges for teachers in 
the Demotic Schools, situated respectively at 



254 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Athens, Patras, Tripolis, Larissa, and Corfu. 
Women teachers must have passed through the 
Arsakeion, or a Training College. The teaching 
staff of the Hellenic Schools and the Gymnasia 
is drawn from the University. But whereas the 
elementary teachers in the Demotic Schools have 
an assured position, there is no fixity of tenure in 
the higher schools. A professor in a Gymnasium 
or a master in a Hellenic School may be removed 
at any time by a Ministerial order, against which 
there is no appeal. He is at the mercy of the 
Government in power for the time being, and 
every new Minister has his proteges. Here again 
intrudes the baneful influence of party politics. 

Thus the teacher must, perforce, have an eye 
on the political situation, and can never have both 
eyes on his work, in which, by the way, it is im- 
possible he should take a thorough interest, since 
he is never sure when it may be taken from him. 
The effect on the pupils is almost as demoralising. 
The normal Greek boy is warm-hearted and high- 
spirited, and his resentment at the removal of a 
popular master is apt to take the form of working 
unwillingly under a new one, to his own detri- 
ment and also to that of the school. The evils of 
centralisation are not limited to the arbitrary dis- 
missal of teachers. The subjects to be taught, 
the hours apportioned to them, and the books to 
be used are fixed by the Ministry. It happens, 
therefore, that manuals are frequently changed — 
often for the worse. The mania is so great for 



EDUCATION 



255 



this that competitions are held for the writing of 
school books. This deplorable practice annoys 
both teacher and taught, who have to throw aside 
a method to which they are used for an untried 
one, a source of delay at the best, and a cause of 
expense to the parents, who have constantly to 
pay for new books. 

The Demotic Schools are supported by the 
Deme or commune to which they belong. They 
are, therefore, less under the thumb of the Govern- 
ment than the higher schools. In each prefecture 
there is a Council of Management for the Demotic 
Schools contained in it. It is presided over by 
the Bishop, and consists of the local Inspector of 
Schools, the Director of the Gymnasium, and two 
citizens, one of whom must belong to a learned 
profession. The Demotic Schools receive a sub- 
vention from the State, but it is a mere trifle com- 
pared with that allocated to higher education — 
2459 drachmas as against 3,467,962, according to 
the statistics of one particular year. This is the 
reverse of the practice of most other countries, 
where State aid is afforded to elementary instruc- 
tion, whilst the higher branches are self-support- 
ing. Another contrast is offered by the ratio of 
the numbers attending the elementary schools to 
the population, which is smaller than with us, 
whilst that pertaining to secondary and advanced 
education is greater. 

The University of Athens consists of five 
Faculties, viz. Theology, Law, Medicine, Philo- 



256 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



sophy, and Mathematics. The last was not pro- 
vided for from the foundation, and more recently 
there has been added another, that of Pharmacy, 
a department of knowledge the teaching of which 
is not considered elsewhere to belong to the 
functions of a university. Its study is pursued 
for three years, that of all the other Faculties ex- 
tending to four. There is only one examination, 
at the end of the four years' course. Students must 
have passed at least two years at a Gymnasium, 
but there is no matriculation nor anything 
corresponding to Responsions or the Previous 
Examination. Students must obtain a certificate 
of attendance at lectures, for which they pay a 
fee of 2 drachmas a year. There is a fee of 250 
drachmas for the legal and medical examinations, 
and one of 50 drachmas for the diploma. Attend- 
ance at lectures is not strictly enforced. The 
Faculty of Law is the most popular, and that of 
Theology the least. The study of Philosophy in- 
cludes philology and history, and the diploma 
may be taken as the Greek equivalent to our Arts 
degree. There is, of course, no collegiate system 
as at Oxford and Cambridge. The organisation 
resembles rather that of German and French 
Universities, though it knows nothing of the 
rigid periodical examinations of the latter, nor the 
Studentencorps which regulate the social side of 
the former. The students enjoy absolute indivi- 
dual liberty. They live where and how they like, 
wear no distinctive dress, and there is nothing to 



EDUCATION 257 



distinguish them from the ordinary citizen. It is 
characteristic of the democratic spirit of the Greeks 
that there is no scholastic status. The freshman 
is the equal of the man in his fourth year. Thus 
the University life of Athens is much less co- 
herent than with us. There are neither the 
associations which spring from the bond of a 
common public school nor the pursuit of a common 
game or sport. There are no games, in fact, and 
athletics are represented by attendance at a gym- 
nasium, which is con pulsory for the first two years. 
The only sport known to the Athenian student is 
a political demonstration, for politics invade the 
groves of Academe as they do every other section 
of Athenian life. The only social tie which has 
any influence is that of the patris, the fatherland, 
which to the Greek means the particular city, 
province, or island from which he comes. Thus 
the students are segregated into groups according 
to their place of origin. A table at a restaurant is 
set apart for students from a particular island or 
province, or they will frequent the same cafe ; but 
be sure that the proprietor of restaurant or cafe is 
a patriotes, that is, he comes from the same island 
or province. For, in this respect, the University 
only reflects the larger life of the city, which is 
split up into sections determined by the patris of 
the inhabitants. On an average about a third of 
the University students come from Greek lands 
outside Greece. In 1902 they numbered 800 out 
of a total of 2574. In 1841, three years after the 



258 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



foundation, there were, in all, 292 students. In 
1885 there were 550, and the numbers increased to 
1 ico in 1863, to 2634 ln 1886, and 3331 in 1890. 
There has been a slight decrease since then. The 
late Mr. Tricoupis wisely put a tax in the form of 
a stamp upon entry to the University. He foresaw 
the evil results of a plethora of professional men 
without occupation. But a greater deterrent to 
academic ambitions was undoubtedly the spectacle 
of barristers punching tickets on the tramcars, a 
means of livelihood which, I am assured by Athens 
University men, is not unknown to graduates 
to-day. It is now felt that the University was 
made too cheap and its degrees too facile. The 
result has been the creation of a large body of 
educated unemployed to swell the ranks of politi- 
cal partisans and place-hunters. Two private 
establishments provide for those who doubt the 
utility of the academic and literary education fur- 
nished by the Gymnasia. One is the Rouspoulos 
Industrial and Commercial Academy, divided into 
a preliminary school and several technical schools. 
Modern languages receive attention in the former, 
and in the latter are taught the principles of com- 
merce and manufactures, mining, and engineering. 
The other is the Athenian School of Trade and 
Industry, which has a commercial and technical 
side. In the former English and French are 
taught, with optional Italian. Commercial geo- 
graphy, the laws relating to custom-houses, and 
the principles of banking are given prominence. 



EDUCATION 259 



On the technical side German is taught, together 
with chemistry as applied to manufactures and 
agriculture, especially as regards the production 
of wine, oil, and currants. The success of these 
institutions, notwithstanding that the fees are far 
higher than those of the State schools, indicates 
the trend of public opinion. There are two Com- 
mercial Schools established by the Government, 
one at Athens, the other at Patras ; but the State 
subvention of 6000 drachmas is ridiculously small 
if compared with the 31 millions granted to higher 
education. The Polytechnic School can be 
entered only by those who have passed through 
the Mathematical School. Engineering,mechanics, 
electrical science and its applications are the 
leading subjects of study. But the Polytechnic 
students are barely a tenth of those at the Univer- 
sity, whilst the pupils at the Agricultural Schools 
at Halmyros and Athens number about fifty. 
The teaching staff alone of the University — 105 
professors and lecturers — more than doubles them. 
Yet Greece contains 5,563,100 acres of tilled land. 

But the Greeks cherish their University as a 
national institution. They made and paid for it 
themselves, in spite of the reluctance of King 
Otho and the ill-will of his Bavarian Ministers, 
who were no lovers of knowledge. One of them, 
Maurer, wrote a book in which he stated that 
Greece, among other things, produced sugar, 
dates, and coffee. The Greeks, whatever may be 
their defects, are not cast in that mould. Finlay 



260 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



is right in saying that during the Turkish domi- 
nation it is probable that the proportion of Greeks 
who could read and write was as great as in any- 
other European nation. They certainly never lost 
entirely the light of learning during the darkest 
period of their national life. 

In the Elementary Schools there are 168,000 boys 
and 42,570 girls. It must be remembered that in 
Greece the males outnumber the females by about 
18,000 in a total population of 2,632,000. Of 
course this does not account for the disparity in 
school attendance, the causes of which have been 
adverted to. Many parents prefer to send their 
daughters to private schools, which are numerous, 
and in so far as concerns Athens and the larger 
towns, schoolgirls are little inferior in numbers to 
schoolboys. There are three Training Colleges 
for women teachers, and of the 4346 teachers in 
the Demotic Schools 800 are women ; though this 
is but a small fraction of the whole, the majority 
being engaged in private establishments. Chief 
among the girls' schools at Athens is the Arsa- 
keion, so called from its founder, Arsakes, a 
native of Epirus. The Arsakeion has branches at 
Larissa, Corfu, and Patras. There are four 
divisions — the Kindergarten, the Elementary 
School, the Intermediate School, and the Normal 
School or Training College. A child entering 
the Elementary School at say six, remains there 
until she is ten. She then passes into the Inter- 
mediate School, where she remains four years. If 



EDUCATION 



261 



she passes into the Normal School, she remains 
another three years, the whole course extending 
over eleven years — the last three being devoted 
chiefly to the theory and practice of teaching. 
The Intermediate course includes the modern 
history of Europe as well as the language, litera- 
ture, and history of ancient and modern Greece, 
with geography and the subjects generally apper- 
taining to the course of a secondary school. 
French is compulsory, so is singing, but the piano 
is optional. Household work and sewing are 
made a special feature, and a physician gives 
lessons in hygiene. The Hill School is named 
after its founder, Dr. Hill, an American mission- 
ary. It is older than the Arsakeion — indeed, it 
dates from 1831, before Athens was a capital. 
There are ten classes, and the number of pupils 
averages perhaps two hundred, some of whom are 
boarders. Notwithstanding its missionary origin, 
there is no proselytising. In fact, the girls are 
provided with a church and a chaplain within 
the building. The languages taught are Greek, 
English, and French, in addition to the usual 
subjects. Many of the best Athenian families 
send their children to the Hill School, which well 
deserves the repute in which it is held. At the 
other end of the social scale is the Parnassus 
night-school for shoeblacks and servants. There 
are classes every night from 6 to 8.30, except 
during the hot months. It is, of course, free, but 
the boys pay for their books. The school is 



262 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



managed by a committee of ladies and gentlemen 
of the Parnassus Literary Club, some of whom are 
doctors, who prescribe and dispense medicine 
gratis to the ailing. A great point is insistence 
on cleanliness. Physiology is a part of the course, 
and gymnastics and singing are taught. The 
boys are very eager to learn. They would not be 
Greeks if they were not. Some of them get be- 
yond the three R's, and learn geography and 
Greek history and the elements of drawing. They 
even read Xenophon in a modern Greek version. 
It is a novel experience to hear a shoeblack count- 
ing up the parasangs covered by the Ten Thou- 
sand, but not an uncommon one in Athens. 



CHAPTER VIII 



PUBLIC LIFE 

IF the House of Commons were composed of 
somewhat more than 3000 members, the United 
Kingdom would have a representative body about 
equal to that of Greece, in proportion to the popu- 
lation. This will give some notion of the large 
amount of public attention absorbed by domestic 
politics and the energy consumed in party strife 
and electioneering tactics. Party, in Greece, is 
not so much a matter of principles as of persons, 
therefore parties vary as to quantity, waxing and 
waning with the disappearance of old leaders 
and the advent of new ones. The Chamber of 
Deputies consists of 234 members chosen by 71 
electoral districts for a period of four years. 
Members must not be under thirty years of age, 
and they must be residents in the district they 
represent. They are paid 1800 drachmas — about 
£75 — for each session, and for a special session 
there is a supplementary allowance of some £60. 
The mode of election is by ballot, and is on the 
basis of manhood suffrage. Ministers need not 
be deputies necessarily, but if they are not they 
have no vote in the Chamber. They receive 9600 

263 



264 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



drachmas a year, about £384. By a singular 
enactment the quorum requires the presence of 
more than half the members, so that legislation is 
often blocked by the party in opposition absenting 
itself en bloc. There is no Second Chamber, and 
seeing that there is no aristocracy, a second would 
only be a replica of the first. The Senate which 
existed under the former Constitution was not a 
success. It distinguished itself chiefly by voting 
an increase in the emoluments of its members. 
There are, however, in Greece warm advocates of 
the restoration of a Second Chamber on new lines. 
The old Senate belonged to the days when con- 
stitutional Greece was still in swaddling clothes, 
when Deputies were attended by escorts from 
their constituencies to protect them from violence 
on the part of their political adversaries, and there 
were sometimes three changes of Ministries in 
two days. 

A joke is still repeated in Athens and fathered 
upon the representative of a Great Power, who is 
said to have remarked that a turkey was bought 
under one Ministry, plucked under another, and 
eaten under a third. This would lose its point 
now ; neither do Deputies hurl gross accusations 
at each other across the Chamber as they did 
formerly. There is more circumspection in the 
conduct of debate and less versatility in respect of 
adherence to party. Nevertheless, politicians do 
still change sides with disconcerting rapidity. It 
must be remembered, however, that a change of 



PUBLIC LIFE 265 



leaders does not involve a change of principles. 
This personal element in politics is, nevertheless, 
an undoubted evil. It gives rise to intrigues in 
which time and energy are wasted without any 
advantage to the commonwealth. Political con- 
siderations are allowed to intrude into the business 
of administration, and even to interfere with the 
course of justice. County Court judges are re- 
movable at the pleasure of the Minister, for 
example. The system by which a change of 
Ministry involves a change of public servants, 
even down to messengers and attendants, is un- 
deniably a vicious one, and one of the most press- 
ing needs of Greece is a permanent civil service. 
This would abolish, to a great extent, the pro- 
fession of political hanger-on and place-hunter. 

As there are too many legislators, so there are 
too many administrative divisions, which occasion 
needless expense. The country is divided into 
twenty-six nomoi or prefectures. The Nomarch is 
appointed by the King at the request of the 
Minister of the Interior, and at any change of 
Government he gives place to the nominee of the 
new Minister. The twenty-six nomoi are divided 
into 439 demes, each governed by a Demarch, 
who does not depend on the Ministry for the time 
being, but is elected by the inhabitants of the 
deme for a period of four years, as are the members 
of the Municipal Council. Voting is by manhood 
suffrage, as in the case of the Parliamentary 
elections. The Demarch may prove very useful 



266 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



on these occasions, and is, on this account,, often 
allowed to exercise a considerable amount of power 
in his deme. As he need give no account of his 
fisc if he pays in the revenue previously agreed 
upon, the temptation to levy arbitrary taxes is 
great. 

It is the class of professional politicians who 
foment political agitation. The peasant at large 
is not really interested in politics beyond the 
natural desire to keep down taxation. He feels 
assured of an easier existence when the party he 
has voted for is in power, and troubles himself no 
further. The Constitution of 1862 was not of his 
making. It is not a product of the people, but of 
political theorists, who copied the institutions of 
other nations. Whether the ready-made political 
garments fit the wearer upon whom they were 
thrust is a question which the writer will not 
attempt to discuss. But the prevalent notion of 
regarding political controversy as an end, rather 
than as the means to an end, is certainly to lose 
sight of the main issue. Despite the democratic 
character of Greek legislation and the total dis- 
regard of rank, personal influence has had and 
still has great weight in the elections. The Greeks 
would not tolerate a King or a President of their 
own nationality, but there is a tendency to welcome 
a more arbitrary form of rule in the person of a 
Dictator. Cultured and thoughtful Greeks — and 
they are not few in Athens — point out that the 
real benefits that have accrued to the country are 



PUBLIC LIFE 



267 



due, not to Government, but to private initiative. 
The descendant of one of the foremost figures in 
the War of Independence, in speaking of this to 
the author, compared Greece, politically, to a 
body without a head. He also regarded the 
franchise, as at present exercised, as an evil, since 
the people were incapable of using it to their 
advantage — in other words, the nation was better 
than the Governments it had elected. He is not 
alone in his opinions. There has long been a 
growing distaste for sterile party manoeuvres in 
the thinking portion of Greek society, and a 
tendency to detachment from politics. It is a 
misfortune, for it is that very element which the 
country needs in the conduct of its affairs. 

Party intrigue and personal animosities are the 
chief hindrances to public business, and in the 
interests of sound legislation they should be dis- 
countenanced by legislators themselves. A 
measure of prime importance in the path of 
reform is the dissociation of the Army from 
politics. Under the present constitution officers 
are eligible for election to the Chamber and 
occupy seats in it. This is recognised as an 
evil by a considerable section of the population. 
Legislation is not the business of the army, whose 
functions should be purely executive. When it 
oversteps those limits it constitutes a danger to 
the commonwealth. The election of officers as 
deputies is not only wrong in principle but sub- 
versive of discipline in the army itself, for the 



268 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



spectacle of a subaltern, who happens to be a 
member of the Chamber, criticising the actions 
of the Minister of War, who is his superior, 
cannot but have a bad effect in the service. 
Moreover, an officer zealous in performing his 
professional duties has no time to devote to 
politics. The exclusion of officers from Parlia- 
ment and the establishment of a permanent civil 
service are two of the most urgent questions de- 
manding the attention of the legislature. 

No less than ten per cent of the direct taxation 
comes from the land and crops. There is also 
a tax on horses, mules, donkeys, and camels, as 
well as on professions and occupations. The duty 
on houses and buildings is a progressive one. 
The protective tariff" on foreign goods is enormous, 
amounting in many cases to more than the prime 
value, so that their consumption is altogether im- 
possible to the poor. Food-stuffs of native origin 
are also very dear. The price of olive oil, an 
article in daily use, is preposterous, considering 
that it is a staple product of the country. Not 
only tobacco, but salt, petroleum, matches, playing 
cards, and cigarette-paper are State monopolies. 
The cigarette is practically the only mode of 
smoking in Greece, and a certain number of papers 
accompanies each packet of tobacco purchased, 
according to its size. The quantity of paper is 
insufficient unless the consumer makes his cigar- 
ette of abnormal thickness, so that he is forced 
to use up his tobacco at a greater rate than he 



PUBLIC LIFE 



269 



intended or have the remainder of a packet useless 
on his hands. The problem is also solved by the 
employment of smuggled paper. Smuggling of 
all kinds is naturally rife in a country where fiscal 
exactions are so numerous. The burden falls 
heaviest on the poor. Although it has been 
lightened for them in some ways, as in the 
reduction of taxes and facilities for deferred pay- 
ment in case of bad harvests, the system of tax- 
farming facilitates extortion and is at the same time 
detrimental to the interests of the State, which 
receives far less than the people pay. A method 
of collecting revenue which involves an expendi- 
ture of eight million drachmas (£320,000) on a 
total of 22,325,000 (£893,000) is undeniably 
wasteful. The revenues assigned to the payment 
of the interest on the foreign loans are collected 
under the supervision of the International Com- 
mission of Control. The first loan of £800,000 
was raised in London in 1824, and was not 
finally liquidated until 1892. The formidable debt 
incurred at various periods since that date has 
been occasioned by military expenses, but the 
thorny subject of Greek finances cannot be entered 
on here. 

The machinery for the administration of justice 
bears more resemblance to that of France than 
to ours. The highest court of civil and criminal 
appeal bears the famous name of the Areopagus. 
There are also local Courts of Appeal at Larissa, 
Nauplia, Patras, and Corfu. The Courts of First 



270 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Instance number twenty-six, and there are dis- 
tributed through the country about three hundred 
and fifty tribunals, whose functions combine those 
of a Police and a County Court. Crimes of violence 
are more numerous than any others; Attica enjoys 
a bad pre-eminence in this respect, and next come 
Achaia and Elis. These are the most populous 
provinces, and they contain the two largest sea- 
ports. It is only fair to their inhabitants to put 
down the prevalence of crime to this cause. In 
the wild mountain districts of Agrapha and 
Karpenisi, statistics show that there is much less. 1 
There is great laxity in dealing with crime. In 
one year, 1890, there were 2301 homicides and 23 
condemnations to death, and the death sentence is 
nearly always commuted. Convictions are few in 
proportion to the crimes, and it is stated that upon 
the fall of the Deliyannis Ministry some years ago 
there were in Laconia alone no fewer than 1247 
fugitives from justice among a population of 
i26,ooo. 2 On the other hand, crimes against 
property are comparatively rare. Burglary is 
almost unknown, and in this respect as well as in 
that of street robberies the inhabitants of Athens 
enjoy far greater security than those of London, 
notwithstanding the incontestable superiority of 
our police organisation. Prison discipline, as it 
is understood in the West, does not exist. Whilst 

1 And in the Cyclades there is the least. 

2 Premeditated murder is so rare that it may be considered 
non-existent. Suicide is unknown. 



PUBLIC LIFE 271 

the sanitary well-being of the convict is not cared 
for as it is in our prisons, he is not deprived of 
tobacco, and conversation with his fellow-prisoners 
is unrestricted. Even pocket-money is his, by 
the sale of trifling articles of his manufacture to 
visitors. The stranger to Athens is not a little 
astonished in passing by a prison to find himself 
apostrophised by the inmates, who with palms 
thrust through the grated windows freely beg of 
the public in the streets. Nor do they beg in vain, 
for they are regarded rather as suffering misfortune 
than expiating a misdeed. Sympathy goes out to 
the man who is undergoing punishment, whilst its 
cause is apt to be overlooked. The assassin is 
commiserated, but his victim is forgotten. It may 
be said that imprisonment has no terrors in Greece ; 
neither is any stigma attaching to it. Certainly 
the inmates of the prisons show no signs of either 
shame or compunction. They are more interested 
in party politics than anything else, for there is 
always a hope that with a change of Ministry will 
come a remission of the sentence. Here again 
politics interfere with the course of justice, and 
those who know best aver that the vote is in- 
directly a means of bringing the law into contempt. 

The Army and Navy, which have drawn so much 
attention upon themselves of late, are in the 
crucible. It is impossible to foretell what develop- 
ments will take place or what form they will 
eventually assume. They have taken matters 
in their own hands to a large extent of late, 



272 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



and the public attitude towards them is one of 
expectancy, not to say anxiety. Nothing more 
than a brief outline of their organisation will be 
attempted here. Military service is compulsory 
and universal. It begins when a man is twenty-one 
and lasts until he is fifty-one. He serves two 
years with the colours, ten in the reserve, eight 
in the territorial army, and ten in the territorial 
reserve. The territorial army is a potential, not 
an actual force. Neither is it usual for a man to 
serve the whole of his two years in the first line. 
The army in the field consists nominally of about 
50,000 men. Its peace strength attains 29,000 of 
all ranks as a maximum. The infantry are armed 
with the Mannlicher-Schonauer rifle, and the field 
artillery with the Schneider-Canet quick-firing 
gun. There are certain infantry battalions called 
evzonoi. These are riflemen and picked troops. 
They are the only soldiers who wear the fustanella, 
the national Greek — or rather Albanian dress. 
They are drawn almost entirely from the mountain 
districts of CEtolia, in Western Greece, especially 
from the neighbourhoods of Lidoriki and Agrapha, 
and from the highlands of Arcadia in the Pelopon- 
nesus. It is from the evzonoi that the King's 
bodyguard is recruited, and there are always some 
of them on duty at the palace. The aspect of the 
streets of Athens, which are always sprinkled with 
the uniforms of officers, leads to the belief that the 
army is over-officered. This is said, however, not 
to be the case. The number of officers seen in 



PUBLIC LIFE 273 



Athens is owing partly to the concentration of 
troops at the capital, and partly to the fact that 
retired officers continue to wear their uniform, so 
that some of the older men one sees are not on the 
active list. It is true, nevertheless, that the officers 
seem to have very little to do. At all hours of the 
day and night they are at the cafes talking politics, 
reading newspapers, or playing dominoes. There 
is a military club, founded by the Crown Prince 
with the object of bringing officers together and 
creating an esprit de corps. It is frequented, but 
the majority appear to prefer the society of the 
citizens. Life is expensive in Athens, and country 
quarters would be more economical for subalterns, 
whose pay ranges from ^53 to ^64 a year, but as 
town-loving Greeks they probably prefer the 
capital. The reserve men come up for training in 
the cool weather, and the barracks and camp on 
the Kephisia Road and at Goudi are then full of 
soldiers. They are clad in a neat serge uniform of 
khaki colour, and are a fairly well set up body of 
men — some of the cavalry-men from the Volo 
district especially so. There is not the same line 
of demarcation between officers and private soldiers 
as with us. The latter salute their officers when 
they meet them, but both frequent the same 
establishments, and an officer may often be seen 
in friendly chat with a soldier. It is true that 
where service is universal the private may be of a 
superior social status to that of his officer. Never- 
theless, the indiscriminate mixing of ranks would 

T 



274 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



not consort with our notions of discipline. But 
discipline of any kind is repugnant to the Greek, 
and that is one reason, perhaps, why so few men 
remain in the service when their time is up, 
although there is a college for non-commissioned 
officers by passing through which they may obtain 
commissions. The artillery and engineers are 
officered from the Evelpidon College at Piraeus. 
The students entering it must possess a certificate 
from a Gymnasium, and the course lasts five years. 
There is also a Subalterns' School for infantry 
and cavalry with a three years' course. There is 
nothing corresponding to our Staff College. The 
officers of the Staff at the Ministry of War change 
with a change of Ministry, for the new Minister 
has his own following, and there are as many 
pillars of the ante-chamber, to use the French 
expression, in the army as in other branches of 
the public service. The ordering of the national 
defence is thus made to depend on the swing of 
the political pendulum. Comment would be super- 
fluous, and if the party of Army Reform make the 
riddance of this abuse one of the planks in their 
platform they will deserve well of their country. 

The Navy is recruited by conscription or enlist- 
ment for a period of two years. It consists of 
about 4000 officers and men. There are about 
5000 men of the naval reserve under thirty-four 
years of age. Naval officers are educated on the 
training-ship Hellas at the Piraeus. They enter 
at sixteen and remain four years. They make 



PUBLIC LIFE 



275 



periodical cruises during this period in the 
Admiral Miaoulis. The men are drawn principally 
from the islands, especially from Hydra and Spet- 
zai, and from the maritime population of Galaxidi 
in the Gulf of Corinth. They are trained for 
three months at the Naval School at Poros and 
then sent to the Arsenal at Salamis, whence they 
are drafted to their ships. They are short, wiry, 
alert, smart in appearance, and thoroughly typical 
seamen. The navy occupies a large place in the 
national affections. It played a great part in the 
War of Independence, and the names of Kanares 
and Miaoulis are still green and potent to awaken 
patriotic sentiment, and the Society for the Forma- 
tion of a National Fleet, which was founded in 
1866, has gathered subscriptions from Greeks, rich 
and poor, the world Over. A lottery has also been 
organised, the drawings taking place every three 
months, and it brings in a steady increment to the 
coffers of the Society. But a modern navy is a 
very expensive thing if it is kept abreast of modern 
developments. The handy brigs of Hydra were a 
match for the lumbering Turkish three-deckers in 
the twenties ; and when Abney Hastings, who 
gave his life for Greece, won the battle of Salona 
with the steam corvette Karteria in 1827, the 
Greek navy was more than abreast of its contem- 
poraries. With the advent of torpedoes it toed 
the line in starting a torpedo school in 1880. But 
of late improvements have been so multiple and 
rapid, both in speed, armament, and devices for 



276 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



attack and defence, that a ship is barely launched 
before she becomes obsolete, and the game can 
only be played with the aid of vast resources. 

The history of modern Greek legislation might 
be roughly divided into three periods. The first 
generation belongs to the men who took part in the 
fight for freedom, Klephts and sailors. They gave 
proof of patriotism with their lives. But it was 
narrow, often restricted to clan or province. Their 
methods were those of the Pashas, from whose 
rule they had but just freed themselves. The 
next generation gave evidence of national growth. 
It created a constitution, established schools, 
rebuilt the towns, made roads, and its legisla- 
tive acts displayed care for and devotion to the 
common weal. But personal ambitions and party 
feuds compromised the public interests. The 
period, nevertheless, was fruitful in improvements. 
The next generation saw the direction of affairs 
pass almost exclusively into the hands of two 
classes represented by the University and Capital. 
The University men were chiefly lawyers, but they 
included graduates of other faculties, and from 
this element arose the class of professional poli- 
ticians. The capitalists were frequently speculators 
and promoters, Greeks in blood but not born in 
Greece. Through their influence financial interests 
and financial schemes were allowed too great a 
sway in the deliberations of Parliament. Greed 
of place and greed of pelf were the characteristic 
evils of this period. Popular opinion and party 



PUBLIC LIFE 



277 



government acted as a corrective, and neither evil 
is so accentuated at present, though both exist. 

Under the Constitution of 1864, the King of 
the Hellenes appoints the Prime Minister and 
chooses the members of the Cabinet, and he has 
power to dismiss them. He can also prorogue or 
suspend Parliament. On the other hand, no act 
of the King is valid unless countersigned by a 
Minister, who thereby renders himself responsible. 

When the reign of King George comes to be 
viewed in the cold light of history, the verdict of 
posterity will be that he accomplished a very difficult 
task wisely and with consummate patience. He 
was seventeen when called, mainly through the 
influence of the British Cabinet to occupy a throne 
for which he had then probably no particular in- 
clination. The Greeks had set their hearts upon 
another ruler. Prince Alfred, then a midshipman 
in the Royal Navy, had been chosen by an 
enormous majority, 230,016 votes out of a total 
of 241,202. This was ratified by the National 
Assembly less than a month before the election of 
the young Prince of Denmark, who had received 
six votes in the same plebiscite. Prince Alfred 
was ineligible by the terms of a treaty previously 
entered into by England, France, and Russia, 
which contained a provision that no member of 
the reigning houses of those Powers should sit on 
the Hellenic throne. There were, of course, other 
reasons which rendered it inadvisable, but this was 
a conclusive one. 



278 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



In the seventies of last century a young couple 
might be met nearly every day in the streets of 
Athens, walking briskly, accompanied by a huge 
Danish hound. King George and Queen Olga 
have from the first led the simplest and most 
unostentatious of lives. When in Athens the 
King may be seen daily riding or driving to 
Phaleron, but he passes much of his time at Tatoi, 
a modest estate in a delightful situation on Mount 
Parnes, about fifteen miles away. He has carefully 
abstained from personal interference in the conduct 
of public affairs, save when it has been necessary 
to safeguard the principles of the Constitution, 
which he insists shall be religiously preserved. 
Retiring and unobtrusive by character and tem- 
perament, he has persistently and indefatigably 
worked for the welfare of the country, and his 
relations with the most powerful Courts of Europe 
have enabled him to accomplish his object. Greece 
owes him an incalculable debt, the measure of which 
will only be known in the future. Queen Olga 
has failed to win the sympathy of the Greeks 
apparently for no better reason than that she is a 
Russian, and in spite of her noble devotion to the 
poor and suffering, of which the great Evangelis- 
mos Hospital is a lasting monument. The Crown 
Prince has directed his energies to raising the tone 
of the army and promoting esprit de corps among 
the officers. Prince Nicholas is the artist of the 
family. Princess Sophia, who has the eyes and the 
disposition of her revered mother, the Empress 



PUBLIC LIFE 279 



Frederick, has in the conduct of her household 
and the upbringing of her family set a great 
example, and she has worked strenuously to bring 
about an amelioration of the conditions of home 
life among the humbler class. The Children's Hos- 
pital is her creation. The most popular member 
of the Royal Family is Princess Andrew — Princess 
Alice, the daughter of Prince Louis of Battenburg. 
She won the hearts of the Greeks by learning their 
language ere she came among them, and she takes 
a part in their social movements. The mention of 
the name of Princess Alike invariably brings a 
smile and words of affectionate eulogy. The mem- 
bers of the Royal Family of Greece are not hedged 
about with formal pomp. The indifference of the 
Greeks to rank brings to them one advantage : 
they are never mobbed, but allowed to come and 
go with the freedom of ordinary citizens. One 
afternoon in the Museum on the Acropolis, the 
only other visitors were a lady and gentleman and 
their children. It was quite by accident that I 
learned from a custodian that the lady who ex- 
amined the objects with a discernment that came 
of knowledge was the sister of the German Em- 
peror and the granddaughter of Queen Victoria. 



CHAPTER IX 



LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM 

GREEK literature, like the Greek tongue, 
never wholly perished. Through the By- 
zantine period, when futile polemical treatises 
were relieved by chronicles only less dreary, the 
plant still lived to flower in the folk-songs of 
Greece, the dithyrambs of the Klepht, and the 
lyric love ditties. Modern Greek letters, how- 
ever, began with Rigas, who sang of liberty and 
died for it in 1798. The poetic tradition was 
carried on by the two Ionians, Solomos and 
Valaorites, and their mantle has fallen upon 
Palamas, whose Hymn to Athena, Iambs and 
Anapcests, and Songs of my Country would win 
him a high place among contemporary European 
poets were a knowledge of the idiom in which 
they are written more widely diffused. Among 
the novelists Bikelas would probably be accorded 
the palm by his countrymen. His Loukas Larias 
has had, perhaps, more readers than any other 
work of fiction in modern Greek. It deals with a 
subject of which the Greek is never tired, the re- 
birth of Greece, although his hero is not a hero in 
the conventional sense, but a very human person 

280 



LITERATURE & JOURNALISM 281 



whose character is limned with painstaking skill. 
But Bikelas has a firmer and more assured touch 
in his Tales from the JEgean. In them he draws 
from his own experience, and working in familiar 
material, gives vivid transcripts of island life, 
minutely studied. He has passed many years of 
his life in England, and Greece owes to him faith- 
ful translations of Hamlet and Macbeth. Roi'des 
has a large circle of readers ; his most widely 
known novel is Pope Joan. Karkavitzas has a 
devoted public, and Papadiamantes is one of 
the most popular of short-story writers. Epis- 
kopoulos, a brilliant journalist, has done work of 
a more lasting nature, like his Tales of Eventide, 
which appeared originally in an Athenian journal. 
Drosines is best known by his novel Herb of 
Love, the scene of which is laid in Eubcea ; and 
his Fairy Tales for Children display a dainty 
imagination. He is the interpreter of country 
life, which he loves, a rare characteristic in a 
Greek. His Rural Letters are fresh and truthful 
presentments of a phase of existence too little 
known among Athenians, and he has written a 
book devoted to Bees and another to Birds. 
Karavitzas and Kasdones are among the widely 
read writers of stories. M. Psychares, who has 
long been a protagonist on the popular side in 
the language controversy, is best known by his 
My Journey, a brilliant sketch of Greece as he 
sees it, but his output in the realm of fiction is 
considerable. Madame Parren, in her Books of 



282 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



the Dazvn, has written about woman ancient and 
modern, and her novel The Witch is perhaps 
the best known of her works. This list by no 
means exhausts the names of writers in verse and 
prose who would claim notice in a treatise deal- 
ing with contemporary literature in Greece. The 
author does not pretend to do more than call 
attention to its existence, otherwise it would be 
necessary to give some account of the work of 
Provelenghios, Polemis, Porphyrias, Gryparis, 
and others. The Greek public is naturally re- 
stricted, and a section of it finds its literary 
pabulum in foreign authors, so that not a few 
men who could do original work are forced to 
occupy themselves with translation and journal- 
ism. The drama suffers most heavily on this 
account, owing to the mania for French plays 
and musical comedy. The most popular con- 
temporary dramatist is Melas, and Tangopoulos 
comes next perhaps. In the immediate past the 
two most prominent names are those of Ran- 
ghabes and Bernadakis. Both have gone to 
history for inspiration. The latter in Maria 
Doxaparte has taken an incident of the Frankish 
Conquest of the Morea ; and in Nikeplwros Phokas 
the action is laid in Crete of the tenth century. He 
has also presented a modern version of Eunpides 
and a translation of Faust. yEschylus has found 
an interpreter in Soteriades, and Sophocles in 
Manos and A. Vlachos. But the Greeks do not 
take kindly to the metamorphosis of their ancient 



LITERATURE & JOURNALISM 283 



masterpieces. The University students especially 
look upon it as sacrilege, and some time ago they 
made such an uproarious demonstration against 
one of these representations that it had to be with- 
drawn. So the people, who would understand 
very little of Euripides in his pristine Attic, were 
sacrificed to pedantry. 

History is the department of literature in which 
modern Greek is perhaps strongest. Tricoupis' 
History of the War of Independence is more or less 
familiar to Westerns. The History of the Greek 
People, by Papparagopoulos, has become a classic. 
The History of the Athenians from the Turkish 
Conquest to the Campaign of Morosini, by Kampo- 
roglou, is a careful study for which the materials 
are not easily accessible. Sathas has made valu- 
able contributions, embodying much original re- 
search, to a knowledge of the Venetian epoch. 
Lampros in his Mediceval Greece has thrown light 
on a hitherto little -known period. Romanos 
has done much to elucidate an obscure phase 
of history in The Greek Despotat of Epirus. 
Meliarakes has accomplished a similar task in his 
History of the E?7ipire of Niccea after the Latin 
Conquest f Constantinople. All this is work of 
solid value to the student. Recent history has 
found an exponent in Kyriakides, whose Con- 
temporary Greece comes down to 1892. Idromenos 
in his Life of Capodistrias deals with the birth of 
the new kingdom, and Evangelides in Events after 
the Fall of Otho with that of the actual Constitution. 



284 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



There is a healthy tone about popular literature in 
Greece which might be emulated by countries 
nearer home. The series issued by the Society 
for the Diffusion of Useful Books consists of 
volumes costing fourpence each, some of them 
admirably written, and all of them educative in 
the best sense of the term. There is an excellent 
Children's Library, which includes translations of 
children's classics, such as Hans Andersen. The 
Marasle Library, which derives its name from a 
wealthy Greek who originated and endowed it, 
has for its object the publication of works of 
original merit and the translation of standard 
authors. Macaulay is included in the series. 
Among books in foreign languages those in 
French predominate. One sees in the bookshops 
frequented by University men a sprinkling of 
scientific works in German. English books are 
not so plentiful. Illustrated art books and special 
numbers of illustrated journals constitute the bulk 
of them. Hall Caine and Marie Corelli are known 
to the Athenians in translations, and standard 
novels like David Copperfield appear as feuilletons 
in the newspapers. Dumas, Victor Hugo, and 
Jules Verne seem to be the most popular French 
writers in translations. New French novels have 
clients who read them in the original. There are 
far more booksellers in Athens than in any English 
town of the same size and their shops are well fre- 
quented. Indeed, the book is an important item 
in the Athenian scheme of life, and this differ- 



LITERATURE & JOURNALISM 285 



entiates the Greek from other nations in the Near 
East. The comparative paucity of bookshops in 
wealthy Egypt is in marked contrast. But Egypt, 
with its immense Greek colony, is the best customer 
of the Athenian publishers. It is there that Greek 
writers of fiction find their largest public. 

It was on the 24th March, 1824, less than three 
years after the standard of revolt had been raised, 
that the Greek Telegraph was started at Mesolonghi 
under the auspices of Colonel Stanhope, Byron's 
" typographic Colonel," an enthusiastic believer in 
civilisation by newspaper. But it is doubtful if 
this was the first newspaper in Greece. A print 
was issued in the island of Hydra, then the chief 
political centre, and Psyllas, an Athenian journa- 
list of ability and judgment, edited the Ephemeris. 
In the following year the Genike Ephemeris, a sort 
of official gazette, was established at Nauplia, the 
then seat of government. There are now, I 
believe, some 150 journals of various descriptions, 
and Athens with its population of about 170,000 
contrives to support thirteen dailies. The Greek 
temperament is congenial to the development of 
journalism. In one respect the people have not 
changed since, in a memorable address from the 
Areopagus nigh two thousand years ago, they 
were described as loving to hear or tell of some 
new thing. If a Greek has but a halfpenny in his 
pocket, and it is a question of expending it 
upon bread or a newspaper, the chances are 
overwhelmingly in favour of the latter. Most 



286 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



of the papers have come down to a halfpenny. 
The newsboys gain about a third of a farthing 
on every copy. Everybody reads their wares, 
including the boys themselves. At least, they 
manage to learn their contents and proclaim 
what they judge to be the most attractive items. 
If any news of assumed importance arrives, the 
papers issue supplements, and the boys are let 
loose again, careering through the streets with 
shrill cries of " Paratima." ' ' All the winners," the 
stereotyped rubric of the London newsboy, has 
no place in their vocabulary. The interest is 
purely political. Sporting events, which occupy 
so large a space in our halfpenny evening papers, 
have no place in their Athenian contemporaries. 
The debates in the Chamber and party moves, 
with comments thereupon, come first. Every- 
thing which transpires abroad that has any bear- 
ing on Greece is carefully chronicled. The utter- 
ances of European statesmen concerning Greek 
questions are reported in full, and are often made 
the subject of a leading article. There is little 
court news and no " society " gossip. A column 
is devoted to current events in Athens, and 
another to the world outside. The typography 
and get-up of the papers is generally good, and 
nearly all of them are copiously illustrated. Ad- 
vertisements are few and rates low, and the largest 
circulation probably does not exceed 15,000, so 
that special cables are rare. The most important 
items in foreign newspapers are telegraphed from 



LITERATURE & JOURNALISM 287 



Corfu, where the mail arrives some thirty hours 
before it reaches Athens. The European Press 
is ransacked on its arrival, and the " padding " 
derived therefrom keeps the Athenian reader 
abreast of political events. Some papers make 
a feature of discoveries, inventions, and scientific 
news. Athenai and Neon A sty have a literary 
flavour as distinguished from mere news ; the 
latter is distinguished by its articles on social 
topics. Akroftolzs, written in a popular style, 
makes a speciality of non-political articles of 
general interest, and some of the best short 
stories have first seen the light in its columns. 
Hestia — The Hearth — is an evening paper, not 
addicted to sensational headlines, and maintain- 
ing in its articles a high literary level. It is well 
served by its London correspondent, whose letters 
are a special feature. It also gives considerable 
space to book reviews and Hellenic archaeology, 
and on the lighter side it has a well-edited column 
under the alliterative heading Me Liga Logia, 
which may be freely translated u News in a Nut- 
shell," a rubric once familiar in the London Echo. 
Another ably conducted paper is the bi-weekly 
Kratos. It has no party ties, and circulates chiefly 
among Greeks outside Greece. The large and 
increasing Hellenic population in the United 
States has opened up a new field for Greek 
journalism. There are, I am told, no less than 
seven Greek newspapers published in America. 
Personally, I only know one, the Atlantis , now 



288 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



in its seventeenth year, a well-printed eight-page 
daily. Judging from its advertisement columns, 
its coffers are fuller than those of its contem- 
poraries in the mother country. There are many 
Athenian weeklies, fortnightlies, and monthlies — 
children's papers, women's papers written by 
women, and family journals— most of them illus- 
trated. The learned professions have also their 
organs, and there are others devoted to particular 
interests. Romeos, the Athenian Punch, is a 
household word in Greece. The letterpress is 
the work of one man, Mr. Souris, who for more 
than a quarter of a century has laughed good- 
naturedly in verse week by week. Romeos is a 
tour de force, but the modern Aristophanes has 
found time for other work, of which Phasoulis 
Philosopher, is the most notable. 

One fears to touch on the great language con- 
troversy which divides Greek men of letters into 
two camps, the advocates of the Katharevoussa, 
or " purified " tongue, and the vulgarists, known 
as Malliaroi, the long-haired. The latter maintain 
that the so-called " restored " language is a purely 
artificial concoction, an incongruous mixture, not 
partaking of the antique spirit, but of Oriental 
pedantry. Those who use it think they are re- 
verting to Xenophon, but in doing so they show 
that they have not escaped yet from the influence 
of the Turk. A true imitation of the ancients 
would be to produce modern things as they did. 
Popular Greek is a development along the lines 
followed by the Romance tongues from Latin. 



LITERATURE & JOURNALISM 289 



To arrest it is to replace a living thing by a dead 
one. M. Pallis, a great classical scholar, and 
M. Psychares, also a distinguished scholar and 
litterateur, are champions of the vulgarists. The 
former asserts that an Italian writing an article in 
Mediaeval Latin or saying "Date mihi panem" 
would not be more absurd than a Greek employ- 
ing the "purified" language. The latter cites 
the vulgarists Solomos and Valaorites, declares 
that the literary treasures of modern Greece are 
found alone in the popular tongue, and points to 
the sterility of the purists. The latter have, on 
the other hand, a strong advocate in Professor 
Hadzidakes. The battle must be left to the Greeks 
alone. Whatever the issue may be, it is certain 
that at present the spoken and written languages 
differ widely as to words, if not as to construction. 

It must not be thought that the popular tongue 
is not Greek. The peasant when he bids you sit 
down will say " Kathize" as Socrates to Strep- 
siades in The Clouds of Aristophanes. And like 
Socrates, he will call the clouds nephelai. In the 
olive groves on the banks of the Kephisus, "where 
the Attic bird trills her thick warbled notes the 
summer long," the nightingale is still a'edon to 
the man with the hoe. 

The traveller Douglas said of Athens in 1810, 
the Greeks of the classic age would have less 
difficulty in understanding the moderns than the 
contemporaries of William of Malmesbury and 
Froissart in comprehending the English and 
French of their descendants. 



CHAPTER X 



ATHENS 



THENS became the capital of Greece in 1834. 



JTjl It was not the first capital. Nauplia pre- 
ceded it, and for a time ^Egina, whilst Corinth was 
the seat of government during a period of the 
war. Some thought the choice was not a wise 
one. Patras was a place of far greater wealth and 
importance. It had long maintained commercial 
relations with Europe, it was in touch with the 
civilisation of the Ionian Islands, it was a seaport, 
and behind it and on either side lay the most 
fertile region of Greece. Corinth had its ad- 
vocates, and its geographical position certainly 
seemed to mark it out as the centre of the 
kingdom. It commands the traffic between the 
north and south through its narrow isthmus, and 
the two seas make it the natural place of export 
for both east and west. But the fortune of its 
youth seems to have fled for ever, and Corinth 
remains now, as it has been for centuries, little 
else than a large Albanian village. Men's minds 
had been occupied with a waterway through the 
isthmus since the days of Periander, two thousand 
five hundred years ago. Demetrius Poliorcetes 




ATHENS 



291 



was dissuaded from it by his engineers, who had a 
notion that the level of the two seas was not the 
same. Caesar studied the project and might have 
carried it out had not affairs of State diverted his 
energies in other directions. Caligula thought of 
it and abandoned it. Nero actually began it, with 
characteristic theatrical accessories. He gave the 
first stroke with a golden pick, and had placed 
fifteen thousand men on the works when he was 
called away by a revolt in Gaul. The Corinth 
Canal as an accomplished fact was reserved for 
the end of the nineteenth century. But it is, 
commercially, a failure. Steamers coming from 
the Adriatic save 202 miles in the passage to the 
Piraeus. The saving is less for vessels from the 
Mediterranean, and in any case not enough to 
cover the expense incurred in dues. Moreover, it 
is too small — 75 feet wide, 26 feet deep — for vessels 
of large tonnage to pass through in safety. As 
we steam between the sheer rock walls with a vista 
of open sea at either end and a railway bridge 
200 feet above, in the middle, it is melancholy to 
reflect that perhaps the chief benefits of the canal 
have fallen to geologists, to whom it has afforded 
facilities for observing the strata, and to the 
swallows who nest in the crannies. In any case it 
has done nothing for Corinth, forlorn on its flat 
shore, looking all the flatter from its contiguity 
to the Akro-Korinthos, that magnificent isolated 
rock soaring nearly 2000 feet above it. Corinth 
labours under two great disadvantages : it is 



292 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



never free from malaria and it is frequently shaken 
by earthquakes. In 1858 it was destroyed almost 
entirely. Athens, on the contrary, is one of the 
healthiest spots in Greece, and in a land which 
counts, on an average, ninety-four earthquake 
days in the year, it enjoys a remarkable immunity 
from disaster. The shocks with which it is visited 
occasionally are rarely violent enough to cause 
damage. Sentiment had the largest share in 
choosing it as the capital, but in these respects 
the choice was happy. The arid character of the 
Attic plain was commented on by Pindar and 
Thucydides, and no doubt by others before them. 
Certainly it has come in for animadversion ever 
since. The ''chorus of hills" which bound it on 
every side but that open to the sea are not high 
enough to hold the clouds, but, on the other hand, 
they are low enough to admit the northern breezes, 
which temper the summer heat. The thin, trans- 
parent atmosphere renders a high temperature 
much more tolerable than in a damp climate. 
Between the hours of nine and five on a summer 
day, the pavements of Athens scorch and the 
reflection from the white walls blinds, but the heat 
is never what is termed stifling, and it is always 
pleasant in the shade. In the morning, when the 
sky is rosy behind Hymettus, before the sun has 
pumped up the dewy coolness of the night, and in 
the evening, when he sinks in vaporous gold 
behind the ranges of the Peloponnesus, one is 
tempted to say there is no climate in the world 



ATHENS 



293 



comparable to that of Athens. Certainly there is 
nothing precisely like it anywhere else in the Near 
East. The peculiar sweetness of the air strikes 
one every time one returns to it. The cold is 
harder to combat than the heat, in houses where 
there are no appliances for artificial warmth. 
February, March, and even April can be very 
chilly, and the thin air makes the cold more pene- 
trating. The lovely weather of December is often 
prolonged into January. Hence the local proverb, 
" January tries to be spring when it can." 

Athens stretches north from the Acropolis far 
over the plain, runs up the western, southern, 
and eastern slopes of Lycabettus and across the 
Ilissus to the sharp rise beyond, whilst a strag- 
gling suburb extends towards Phaleron on the 
south, and another, more compact, to Patissia 
on the north. An isolated ridge of no great 
elevation rises from the plain and ends in the 
peaked Lycabettus. A mile away on the southern 
outskirts of the city is a group of lower hills, the 
abrupt table of the Acropolis, with its acolyte, 
the rugged Areopagus, and beyond the more 
rounded summits of the Hill of the Muses and 
the Hill of the Nymphs, the former crowned by 
the conspicuous remains of the Philopappus 
monument, the latter by the dome of the modern 
Observatory. The steep flanks of Hymettus 
bring the mountain barrier nearest, eastward of 
the city. On the west and north it is formed 
by ^Egaleos and the loftier Parnes and Pentelicus. 



294 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



The thoughts of one arriving in Athens for the 
first time are probably bent on the Acropolis, but 
his eyes will almost surely at first be drawn to the 
bold and graceful outline of Lycabettus, the noble 
rock some nine hundred feet high, considerately 
dropped by Athena to serve as a bulwark for her 
Athenians. It is the antithesis of the Acropolis, 
for it is without a history. It has not even been 
determined if it was the Anchesmos of the 
ancients. But it is the dominant feature of the 
city, from which it soars, an abrupt peak capped 
by the white monastery of St. George, and its 
beauty never palls. The inhabitants of Athens 
ascend it on St. George's Day in crowds. On 
the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the 
year, as a rule, they leave it severely alone — an 
advantage to those who wish to enjoy the prospect 
it affords in tranquillity. That and also the view 
from the Acropolis have been described by Chris- 
topher Wordsworth and many travellers since. 
If this were a guide-book it would counsel as a 
point of view for Athens itself, as distinct from 
its environs, the open space near the so called 
Theseum, for the reason that it includes both 
Lycabettus and the Acropolis, whereas if either 
be taken as a standpoint it is left out of the 
picture. 

As the Cannebiere is to Marseilles and the 
Toledo to Naples, so is Stadium Street to Athens, 
in the estimation of the citizens. Needless to say, 
it has nothing in common with either, save that it 



/ 



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295 



is regarded as the principal thoroughfare. In it 
are situated the Boule — Parliament, the Ministry 
of Finance, the High Court of Appeal, and the 
Royal Stables, none of which can be considered 
inspiring architecturally. But its shops and 
restaurants are of the best, and it is the main 
channel of communication between Constitution 
and Concord Squares, which may be taken as the 
two centres of the city, the former that of the 
court quarter and the latter of commerce. Parallel 
with Stadium Street is the less frequented but 
more spacious University Street, and beyond this 
again, on rising ground, Academy Street. Univer- 
sity Street, with its broad pavements and hand- 
some buildings, ranks with the finest thoroughfares 
in Europe, and not one among them can show 
anything to compare with the Academy, a really 
successful revival of Ionic. The University and 
the Public Library are Doric ; the latter is a good 
example of the order. The southern end of Uni- 
versity Street leads to the space in front of the 
Palace, where the Kephisia Avenue debouches 
on to Constitution Square. The site is the most 
imposing in Athens, though the Palace does not 
enhance it. The Bavarians wanted to place it 
on the Acropolis. It is said that King Otho put 
his foot down on that project. If so, the world 
owes him a lasting debt. The Palace Gardens, 
planned by Queen Amalia, are open to the public 
twice a week — a boon, for this delightful grove is 
the only shadeful spot in the city. The gardens 



296 HOME LIFE IX HELLAS 



are flanked on three sides by the Kephisia Avenue, 
the Amalia Avenue, and that of Herodes Atticus, 
and they abut on the grounds of the Zappeion. 
The three avenues are planted with pepper trees 
whose branches droop over the broad pavement, 
and flanked by mansions — the Mayfair and Bel- 
gravia of Athens. The Zappeion grounds are 
the chosen promenade of an evening. The ter- 
race commands a prospect it would be hard to 
match. From a broad flight of marble steps, 
flanked by statues of the brothers Zappa in frock- 
coats, we look across a foreground of shrubs and 
winding walks to the stately columns of the 
Temple of Olympian Jove, rising high above 
the palms, the most grandiose of Athenian fanes, 
one of the first to be begun and the last to be 
completed. Did not Plutarch moralise over its 
unfinished state? To the right towers the abrupt 
eastern face of the Acropolis, pitted with caverns, 
crowned with frowning walls, and above, against 
the sky, the gleaming marble of the Parthenon. To 
the left, the Ilissus, oleander-fringed, and beyond 
it the low hills of Agrse with their vesture of 
dwarf pines, against which the restored Stadium, 
fronted by the statue of M. Averof, also in a frock- 
coat, stands out sharply in raw whiteness. Be- 
tween the tall Olympian columns in front, the 
shimmer of the JEgean, framed by the shoulders 
of Hymettus, the distant peaks of Argolis, and 
dotted with isles of opal and mother-of-pearl. It 
would be idle to try to describe this at sunset 



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when the sea is incarnadined, the mountains robed 
in deepest violet, and the Parthenon a rosy flame. 
The Athenians, meanwhile, seem to reck little of 
these things. They are too busy over politics 
at the little round tables of the open-air cafe. 

The Agora of modern Athens is Constitution 
Square. Everybody puts in an appearance there 
once at least in the twenty-four hours. Politicians 
frequent the cafes, and the haute volee of Athens 
society the patisseries. The two best hotels are in 
the Square. It is the foreigners' centre. Tourist 
agencies divide it with photograph shops and 
dealers in antiquities. In the warm summer 
evenings the festoons of twinkling lamps amid 
the orange trees throw a soft light on the groups 
scattered at the tables which fill up the whole 
central space. The scene is bright, but it can 
scarcely be called gay. Unlike the French and 
Italians, the Greeks of the middle-classes have a 
tendency "to take their pleasures sadly." 

Out of Constitution Square runs Hermes Street, 
due west, older and narrower than Stadium Street, 
but containing the best jewellers' and goldsmiths' 
shops. It is the best-paved thoroughfare in 
Athens. Branching from Hermes Street north- 
wards is ^olus Street. This runs through the 
heart of the business quarter, which may be said 
roughly to lie within the triangular area bounded 
by Hermes Street, Stadium Street, and ^Eolus 
Street. The latter ends in a square flanked by 
three great buildings — the Post and Telegraph 



298 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



Office, the National Bank, and the Municipal 
Theatre. West of iEolus Street, and like it run- 
ning north and south, is the Street of Athena, a 
broad boulevard of a popular character. Beyond 
this is a vast and populous quarter inhabited by the 
humbler classes. It is penetrated by arteries, 
Euripides Street and others. Its denizens take 
a pride, seemingly, in displaying their bedsteads, 
perhaps as a sign of Athenian citizenship. Bed- 
steads are unknown among the rural poor. The 
streets are full of children, as in similar neighbour- 
hoods with us, but Athens does not contain any- 
thing like the noisome London slums. Poverty is 
not so dire ; house-room, though dear enough, is not 
so exorbitant ; and the bright, clear air bathes 
everything. There is no grimy blackness, no 
hopeless squalor. Wine-shops are abundant. 
Most of them are gardens roofed with vines. The 
workman pays his penny for his half-oke (about 
two-thirds of a pint) of wine, and the vintner 
supplies him with olives. He will make merry 
for the better part of the evening on this, trolling 
with his mates those Greek choruses in a minor 
key which sound so lugubrious to Western ears. 
He has air and elbow-room, a comfortable seat 
and a handy table. If he were told that the English 
working-man recuperates in a sort of dirty horse- 
box nor dreams of the luxury of a seat, he would 
not believe it. 

Some travellers have said that there is no intoxi- 
cation in Greece. It would be truer to say that 



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there is no drunkenness of the baser sort. The 
fiery mastika leads to brawls, which occur chiefly 
in the seaports ; but the beverages of the Greek 
are not stupefying, and rarely sophisticated. He 
grows merry at times over his wine, but it is light 
and harmless. The Greeks of the humbler sort 
spend more time in taverns than Englishmen of the 
same class, but with no lamentable results. One 
reason is the more wholesome nature of the bever- 
ages aforesaid, but a greater is the wholly different 
character of the places in which they are consumed. 
These are not part of a vast system ingeniously 
devised to promote the sale of alcoholic liquors. 
They are owned by the individual who keeps them, 
and who, in many cases, is the proprietor of the 
vineyard which is the source of their supplies. 
Moreover, a Greek never drinks without eating 
something, however little. A liquid is never 
served unaccompanied by a solid. An essential 
in every establishment is an array of diminutive 
plates containing these addenda — morsels of water- 
melon, sections of oranges, nuts and fruit accord- 
ing to season, pickled celery and pepper-pods, 
shell-fish, sliced tomatoes, cubes of bread coated 
with caviar or soft cheese, roasted chick-peas, 
tziro, a small fish, dried, pounded, and divided 
into strips. The variety is greater or less accord- 
ing to the place. Some are noted for special 
delicacies of their own, but olives, white cheese, 
and haricots are never absent. Then the Greek 
supplements wine with copious draughts of water, 



300 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



or simply dilutes it. A goblet, clear and cold, is 
served as a matter of course with the stronger 
liquid. So that mere drinking is not the only 
resource of the tavern, nor are its clients made to 
feel that they must drink so long as they remain 
in it. Neither do they hide their potations 
behind blinds and screens in a reeking atmo- 
sphere. For three parts of the year they frequent 
the garden, amidst growing plants, trellised 
creepers, and wandering vines, and the tavern 
itself is open to the broad light of day, its tables 
overflowing on to the pavement. The division of 
an establishment into compartments graduated by 
the price of the refreshment is unheard of, nor 
would it be tolerated. A measure of wine of the 
smallest entitles the purchaser to the full range of 
the premises. Thus the Greek tavern is a much 
simpler and a much saner thing than the English 
public-house. There is no plush, no gilding, 
none of the garish adornments of the gin-palace. 
Fresh air and shade are its chief attractions, and 
its only adornment flowering plants. The Greek, 
like the Englishman of old, takes his ease in his 
inn. No stigma attaches to it, and no sense of 
degradation is felt by the man who frequents it. 
The man — for no Greek woman enters a tavern, 
nor is she ever employed there to serve ; she goes 
to a cafe with her family, and ladies on shopping 
expeditions may be found in the patisseries. But 
the spectacle of a tavern crowded with women of 
the poorer class, so frequent in London, is unknown 



ATHENS 



301 



in Athens. Another point of divergence is the 
practice of paying on delivery. The London 
tavern-keeper demands payment before the liquor 
is consumed, assuming that his customer is 
dishonest. The Athenian host never troubles 
about the score until the guest takes his departure. 
The former may be the wiser of the two, but his 
method has a shrewd moral significance. 

Apart from the first-class hotels — one of which 
at least is equal to any in Western Europe — and 
the second-class hotels in the vicinity of Concord 
Square, some of which are all that can be desired 
in cleanliness and service, the wanderer in Athens 
often comes across an inscription, Xenodocheion tou 
Hypnou — literally, Hotel of Sleep. These establish- 
ments provide bed, but not board. They are used 
by country-folk who have business in the capital, 
for their tariff is modest, and the frugal Greek 
cares to spend very little on his sustenance. 
They are found chiefly in Athena Street and 
in the vicinity of the railway-stations. In the 
provinces the inns are of the same kind, some- 
times with a restaurant attached. They are fairly 
comfortable, and the traveller can always count on 
being provided from outside with tolerable fare. 
He will not find bathrooms, but the towels will be 
spotless, and a hair-brush and comb and pair of 
slippers are part of the furniture of his room. A 
tooth-brush is not included in these little amenities, 
so he is reduced to using his own. There will be 
no extras in his modest bill, not even that two 



302 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



shillings for imaginary attendance which figures 
in the account of the English innkeeper who has 
condescended to entertain him. To return to 
Athens, here is a wine-shop, one of many. The 
proprietor is a medical man who owns a vineyard 
in Santorin. The doctor comes over occasionally 
to look after it. But he leaves everything to his 
manager, a young fellow from a village a few 
miles out of Athens, whose assistant is a sturdy 
little boy from the distant isle of Anaphe. He 
carries wine to houses all over Athens. His 
working hours average fourteen on week-days and 
five on Sundays. He is not carrying incessantly, 
of course. Such a feat would tax the powers of a 
Hercules. In the intervals he attends on casual 
customers and is employed in divers ways, so that 
he is on his feet most of the time. For this he 
gets about eighteenpence a week, food and lodg- 
ing. His father is a sailor, trading between the 
Black Sea and British ports. Panayoti wants to 
go to sea too, and is anxious to see England. 
He is diminutive for his age — thirteen — but thick- 
set, and he walks as though he were on a moving 
deck. This is not because he was born on a small 
island. Anaphe is firmly anchored, but much of 
his childhood has been passed in boats. He is 
strong and handy, and will do well enough at sea, 
but, like most islanders, he is very quick and intelli- 
gent, and his ultimate destination will probably be 
America, the gulf which swallows so much of the 
youth and energy of Greece. Our wine-shop is 



ATHENS 



303 



not much frequented by casual customers — the 
palate of the Athenian people is more attuned to 
their native resinata than to the vintage of San- 
torin. The latter has its amateurs nevertheless. 
The doctor is not ashamed of his wine-butts, and 
when he is at Athens his professional friends 
come to see him at the shop. Three or four 
workmen come at their dinner-hour, then the 
barber from next door and the photographer from 
over the way. A couple of cavalry officers in their 
green and gold uniform add a note of colour to 
the assembly. Three civilians, who speak Greek 
as a mother tongue and suddenly drop into 
German equally colloquial, but with an accent 
and an intonation evidently not acquired in the 
Fatherland, would be a puzzle did we not re- 
member that about five miles north of Athens 
the traveller's gaze is arrested by a church spire, 
an unwonted spectacle in Greece. Hard by is 
a graveyard, the stones lettered in the Greek char- 
acter indeed, but the names German. A bevy of 
schoolgirls approach chattering voluble Greek, 
but their blue eyes and blonde pigtails are those 
of the Teuton madchen. This is a survival of the 
days of King Otho and the Bavarians. The little 
colony was founded in 1837. I ts members have 
remained Catholics, and they have preserved their 
tongue, though Greek is more familiar to them. 
Save in this and their descent they are Greeks. 
Hence the explanation of our bilingual friends in 
the wine-shop, into which there enters a youth con- 



304 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



ning a book. He proceeds to assist in attending 
to the guests. The book is on a table at our elbow. 
We take it up. It is Latin — Cornelius Nepos. Its 
owner can parse it and turn it neatly into Greek. 
Of course he is far more at home with Xenophon 
or the Odyssey. Halley's comet happens to be 
a topic of conversation. He knows the period of 
its occurrence, and displays a fairly extensive 
acquaintance with the ways of comets generally. 
Questioned as to eclipses, he demonstrates those 
of the moon by diagram. That this comes from 
a boy engaged in serving halfpenny glasses of 
wine excites no remark. Education bears no rela- 
tion to social status in Greece. Christo is the 
younger brother of Spiro, who has charge of the 
shop. When he has finished his course at the 
Gymnasium he will go to the University. Spiro, 
asked as to what faculty his brother will take up, 
replies, " Opos aresei" — what he pleases. Christo 
himself has as yet an open mind on the matter. 
Greeks like to have one lettered member of the 
family, who, to his credit, never assumes 
superiority over his unlettered brothers. It is 
true, his lot is often less enviable than theirs from 
a worldly point of view. In this case it has fallen 
to Christo, and he accepts it as a matter of course. 
He instances in the concrete the social conditions 
of his nation, and so does the propinquity of the 
workman's blouse to the officer's gold lace and 
the doctor's broadcloth at the tables he serves. 
The workman may have a brother in their posi- 



ATHENS 



305 



tion, as they may have brothers in his. Whether 
what has been termed an educated proletariat is 
a wise thing or the reverse, it is the way of 
Greece. Distinctions exist necessarily, but there 
is no caste. The rich do not despise the poor, 
nor do the poor envy the rich. 

Nestling beneath the northern face of the Acro- 
polis and running far up its steep slope, a region 
bounded on the north by Hermes Street, west by 
the Street of the Philhellenes, and extending east- 
ward to the Theseum, is the Athens of history. Not 
of ancient history necessarily, though it contains 
nearly all the antique remains within the city, but 
of the Middle Ages onward to the Independence and 
the time immediately following it. It is the Athens 
of the Frankish Dukes and the Turks ; the Athens 
to which Cockerell came in December, 1810, when 
he found three young Cambridge men, Graham, 
Haygarth, and Byron, lodging in the house of 
the widow Macri ; the Athens known to Dodwell 
and Leake, Tweddell and Chandler, Sibthorpe 
and Hawkins, Stuart and Revett ; the Athens dis- 
covered by the pioneers of the study of Hellenic 
antiquity among Englishmen, Wheler and Francis 
Vernon, in the seventeenth century. 

Archaeology is not all dryasdust. It has its 
romance, and volumes might be written on the re- 
discovery of Greece from its dawn in 1430 with 
Cyriacus of Ancona onwards. But the thoughts 
of an Englishman turn naturally to those of his 
own race who took part in the lifting of the veil, 
x 



306 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



They came when the night of Athens was at its 
deepest. Greek scholarship had grown in Western 
Europe since the fifteenth century. During the 
same period Greece grew more obscure, until at 
last those who reverenced the name of Athens 
did not realise that it had a material existence. 
Yet Athens was never quite dead. Francis 
Vernon, who spent two months there in 1675, 
wrote that it was second only to Rome in its 
remains. Chandler, who came a century later, 
was "delighted and awed." One likes to recall 
the fresh enthusiasm and the emotion of these 
discoverers of a new old world. One would like 
to see the house where Byron lodged. 1 Finlay's 
residence still exists, and ought to have an 
absorbing interest for all students of the history 
of mediaeval and modern Greece. They are very 
charming, these old houses. They ramble in 
spacious courtyards where lemon and orange 
glint against the dense green in winter or starry 
blossoms breathe perfume in spring. Broad 

1 A Smyrna merchant told the author that he was once in 
Athens, when he fell in with an Englishman to whom he expressed 
a great desire to see the Maid of Athens. His acquaintance 
made an indifferent response and the conversation turned to 
other matters. Eventually the Englishman asked him to his 
house to take pot-luck. On arriving they were received by his 

wife. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. , the Maid of 

Athens." There was nothing remarkable in her, said Mr. W. 
— fine eyes ; but all Greek girls have fine eyes. The name of the 
Englishman was Black. He was in the Consular service when 
he married Theresa Macri, the Maid of Athens. She survived 
him, dying in 1875 at the age of eighty. She was described as a 
tall old lady with features inspiring reverence. There are still 
people of the quarter who remember her. 



ATHENS 



307 



wooden balconies draped with jasmine jut forth 
from them, and terraces cunningly arranged 
under a spreading fig tree in a cool corner afford 
air and shade in the baking afternoons. An 
Athenian described this quarter to the author as 
" our Faubourg St. Germain." It is no longer 
fashionable, but a few old families linger there. 
They are far better off in their vast, cool rooms 
and shady balconies than the up-to-date Athenians, 
who look so unhappy behind the iron railings 
of their trim double-fronted villas built on models 
of a German watering-place of twenty-five years 
ago. Hadrian Street — the Bond Street of Athens 
in the forties and fifties — winds through the heart 
of this from east to west. At its eastern end is 
the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, in the 
middle of an open space. The author used to be 
puzzled as to how Byron could have written The 
Curse of Minerva and a portion of Childe Harold 
in that slender shaft, which looks as though it 
were solid, and at present has no means of in- 
gress. But Dodwell revealed the mystery through 
an engraving in his Tour, showing the interior of 
the monument as an alcove in an apartment of the 
Franciscan Convent, in the south-east angle of 
which, as he explains, it was " partly immured." 
Byron wrote to a friend in 1811 : "I am living 
alone at the Franciscan Convent with one friar (a 
Capuchin, of course) and one fri<?r, a bandy-legged 
Turkish cook." The circular alcove would afford 
a welcome retreat, and there beneath the piece of 



308 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



marble carved into a leaf pattern which forms its 
roof he handled Lord Elgin so fiercely, his indig- 
nation sharpened perhaps by the proximity of the 
scene of the depredations, for the east cliff of the 
Acropolis almost overhangs the monument. The 
convent has been cleared away with its garden 
"laid out in the Italian manner," and "the three- 
thorned acacia," as described by Dodwell, who 
was there five years before Byron. He says the 
convent preserved the monument, and it may be 
true, for an offer was made for it in 1801 by an 
amateur whose name is not recorded. How- 
ever, it has survived the convent, as it pre- 
ceded it. It was erected in 337 B.C., one of many 
monuments in that Street of the Tripods whose 
name is preserved in the modern Odos Tripodon 
which probably follows part of the ancient way. 
We regret the convent for the sake of its associa- 
tions. Chandler came here and tells of the 
beauty of the prospect from it. He speaks, 
too, of the shouting of the Turkish patrols at 
night from the Acropolis above. Wheler, just a 
century before, remarks on "the great hallowing 
and noise " from the same source. He, too, sought 
the hospitality of the little " hospitium or cell of 
the Capuchins, adjoining the Lantern of Demos- 
thenes " — the popular name for the Choragic 
Monument, which clings to it still. People will 
say they live near the Phanari, though they know 
it is a Mnemeion. Wheler describes the city as 
about four miles in circumference, with 8000 or 



ATHENS 



309 



10,000 inhabitants. There were eight Epitropoi 
or magistrates to decide causes among the 
Christians. He counted 200 churches, fifty-two 
of which were in use. Most of these would be 
tiny Byzantine fanes, a few of which remain. 
But a place which contains 200 churches, besides 
mosques and baths, to say nothing of tribunals 
and a garrison, can hardly be called an obscure 
village, as it was assumed to be by many in the 
last century. Chandler said in 1765, those who 
called it a small village must have beheld the 
Acropolis through the wrong end of a telescope. 
He was pleased with the behaviour of the people, 
and remarked that Greeks and Turks lived on 
more equal terms than elsewhere. Wheler, who 
was at Athens a century before him, made similar 
observations. He had seen few towns in Turkey 
as well preserved or that enjoyed greater privi- 
leges, and he gave the reason. The Athenians 
in every difficulty appealed to their patron, the 
Kizlar-Agha. A little romance attaches to this. 
Vasilike, a beautiful Athenian, was carried off as 
a slave to the Seraglio at Constantinople, and 
Sultan Achmet I became so enamoured of her 
that he could refuse her nothing. She did not 
forget her birthplace in the hour of her prosperity, 
and like the Empress Irene eight centuries earlier, 
she used her influence in the interests of the 
Athenians. Athens then occupied the rank of a 
provincial town in the pashalik of Egripos, which 
included the island of Negroponte, and the main- 



310 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



land provinces of Bceotia, Locris, and Attica. It 
suffered the usual exactions and injustice, and 
Vasilike pleaded its cause with the Sultan, with 
the result that it was detached from the tyranny 
of the Pasha of Egripos and his myrmidons, and 
granted as a fief to the Kizlar-Agha, a functionary 
whose title means, literally, the Master of the 
Girls, though he is known more familiarly to 
Europeans as the Chief Eunuch. This personage, 
more powerful than any Pasha, himself appointed 
the Voivoda or Governor of Athens, who would 
speedily have been presented with a bowstring had 
he been guilty of maladministration. Achmet I 
died in 1617, but the privilege he granted was 
continued by his successors, and Athens remained 
a fiscal appanage of the Palace down into the 
nineteenth century. Thus Byron's line, " Slaves, 
nay the bondsmen of a slave," was literally true, 
for the Kizlar-Agha, though wealthy and potent — 
he bore the title of Highness and ranked with the 
Grand Vizier, whom he could often make and un- 
make — was in reality an Ethiopian slave. That 
Athens of all places should have fallen into the 
possession of this sable thrall is a supreme 
instance of the irony of fate. Accorded as a boon, 
it might rather have been accounted the depth of 
degradation ; yet a boon it was, inasmuch as it 
saved the city from the rapacity of the ordinary 
form of Turkish rule. The shadow of her ancient 
glory seems at all times to have inspired respect. 
Under the Byzantine Empire — and the Byzantines 



ATHENS 



311 



were perhaps more rapacious than the Turks — 
Athens enjoyed certain privileges. For instance, 
the Prastor of Thebes, notwithstanding his 
superior jurisdiction, might not enter the city with 
an armed force. In later days Athens still remained 
a centre of erudition. John of Basingstoke, Arch- 
deacon of Leicester, went there for the purpose of 
study in the reign of our Henry III. 1 He 
was accomplished in all the learning of his time. 2 
Yet he said that he had seen and heard from 
learned Greeks things unknown to the Latins. He 
brought back a system of numerals, a grammar 
which he called the Donatus of the Greeks, and 
among many newly discovered books the Testa- 
ment of the Patriarchs, which he showed to his 
friend Robert Grosseteste, the great Bishop of 
Lincoln, who had it translated into Latin. 
Before this certain Athenian clerics — philosophers 
Matthew Paris calls them — came to the Court of 
King John, where they engaged in theological 
disputations with English divines. The chronicler 
describes them as grave of countenance and 
haughty in bearing. 3 

Ramon Muntaner, soldier and historian, who 
held a command in the expedition of the Infant 
Ferdinand of Majorca, gives a glowing account 
of the brilliant Court of Athens, the wealth of the 

1 John of Basingstoke died in 1252. 

2 " Vir in trivio et quadrivio ad plenum eruditus." — Matt. Paris, 
Chronica Maj'ora, v. 285-7. 

3 "Vultu et g-estu severi." — Matt. Paris, Historia Anglorum, 
iii. 64. 



312 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



city, and the prosperity of the surrounding 
country. Yet when he was there in the reign of 
Duke Guy II, who died in 1308, Thebes, with its 
great castle of Santomeri, was more important 
than Athens. The doughty Catalan saw what he 
had never encountered in the West, a prosperous 
middle-class. Down to the fifteenth century the 
cities of Greece were far in advance of those of 
France and England, in commerce, industry, and 
the amenities of life. Europe still looked to the 
East for arts and learning. When Mohammed II 
visited Greece in 1458, two years after the Con- 
quest, he was astonished not only at the antique 
remains on the Acropolis, but at the splendid 
buildings and spacious quays which the Floren- 
tine Dukes had constructed at the Pirseus. In 
the early nineteenth century the Piraeus con- 
sisted of a monastery, a shed, and a few hovels. 
In 1836 its population was 1500. It now numbers 
some 70,000. But Athens never ceased to be a 
city. The portion in which we now are was walled 
until 1835. One of the gates — Bobonistra — stood 
somewhere in the area now occupied by Con- 
stitution Square, which gives an idea of the 
growth of the modern town. The city of 
Hadrian, which lay to the east of his Arch, as the 
inscription tells us, is now an open space, most 
of which is taken up by the Zappeion and the 
Royal Gardens. Here and there fragments of 
pavement or a marble plinth remain. These and 
columns of the Great Temple are the only re- 



ATHENS 



313 



mains of the new Athens reared by the Emperor. 
The region south of the Acropolis, an important 
quarter of the city in the time of Thucydides, is 
now deserted. The venerable rock is no longer 
the centre of Athens, which in these days has 
spread northwards. 

Following Hadrian Street westward we come to 
a busier quarter, the nucleus of old Athens, where 
traces of the Turk are mingled with the relics of 
antiquity. The shops and cafes are meaner than 
those of new Athens, but the district has more 
character and interest. Here history was made. 
Stadium Street and Concord Square have no story 
to tell. Old-fashioned people cling to the quarter. 
The bubbling nargileh reminds us that we are in 
the East. A narrow street devoted to shoemakers, 
and another given up to the din of coppersmiths 
with their " rude mechanicals that work for bread, 
upon Athenian stalls," are vestiges of the old 
bazaar. Here is the dismantled mosque, to the 
building of which went one of the great columns 
of the Olympeion — in pieces. Beside it stands a 
Corinthian facade, a fragment of the Stoa of 
Hadrian, and successively the Palace of the 
Frankish and Turkish Governors, demolished 
under King Otho. Westward is the Doric gate- 
way of Athena Archegetes and the Clepsydra of 
Andronicos Cyrrhestes — the Tower of the Winds, 
which gives its name to ^olus Street, stretching 
northward in a long perspective. It is hard to 
realise that this monument was once a tekkeh of 



314 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



the Dancing Dervishes. Yet Dodwell has a 
drawing of its interior with the mevlevi engaged 
in their corybantic devotions. In some of its out- 
ward aspects the neighbourhood still corresponds 
to Dr. Wordsworth's description, though there is 
no muezzin calling the Faithful to prayer. But 
how strange it is to read that this insignificant 
backwater, outside the stream of Athenian life, 
was then "the only street of any importance — 
with no foot-pavement and a gutter in the centre." 
That was in 1832, on the very eve of emancipa- 
tion ; yet there were " no books, no lamps, no 
windows, no carriages, no newspapers, no post- 
office." Imagine the Athenian of to-day without 
his newspaper. 

Through a district poor and populous, but 
redeemed from sordidness by the flowers and 
foliage that embellish the humble dwellings, we 
come to the western limits of the region and the 
Theseum, best preserved of the remains of ancient 
Athens. From Theseus and Herakles the thoughts 
of the Hellenist will turn to an Englishman. 
Here in 1799 was laid to rest the brilliant young 
Cambridge scholar John Tweddell. During four 
years of travel he had laid up a great store of 
knowledge which he had embodied in journals 
kept with minute care. He had engaged a French 
artist, Preaux, to accompany him and copy, to use 
his own words, " not only every temple and every 
archway, but every stone and every inscription 
with the most scrupulous fidelity. " The bulk of 



ATHENS 



315 



this, together with 150 drawings of costumes and 
usages and 40 views, were deposited with Thorn- 
ton at Constantinople. Lord Elgin, then ambassa- 
dor, ordered everything to be given into his 
charge. This was done, and it was the last that 
has ever been seen of either journals or drawings. 
Lord Elgin stated that he had sent them to a 
relative of Tweddell in England, but they never 
arrived. There was a controversy at the time, but 
the mystery has not been cleared up to this day. 
The loss is irreparable, for the things that were 
recorded by a most sedulous student and accurate 
observer have themselves perished. 

Take any turning to the south and the streets 
soon become stairways leading up to Anaphiotike 
—a quarter inhabited by islanders from Anaphe 
and Santorin, who live in flat-roofed houses like 
those they have left. Narrow lanes wind up and 
down, following the contour of the rock. The 
goats and chickens — everybody seems to keep 
poultry here — lend a rural touch, and the baggy 
breeches and red bonnets smack of the ^Egean. 
The colony is not old — drawings of the early nine- 
teenth century show a bare slope — and I could 
never learn from the inhabitants how it came here. 
It is fed by a perennial stream of immigrants. 
The children — they are almost as numerous as the 
chickens — want to show you the way to the 
Kastro. It is the fortress up here, the Acropolis 
down below. And a fortress it is. You do not 
see the temples, only the ochreous brown shoulder 



316 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



of the rock. And the grim walls — those walls of 
many builders — frown overhead. It is the Acro- 
polis under its military aspect. Athens is spread 
out at your feet, flat and white. It seems to be a 
thing apart, for Anaphiotike is quite different to 
the rest of the city. It has a charm of its own 
though, and is a splendid point of vantage for a 
sunset. But we must not linger more, and to the 
cheery Kalee nykta of these rural citizens we 
hurry down the steep ways and through old 
Athens to the Cathedral Square, a few paces 
beyond which is Hermes Street and modernity. 
The Metropolitan Church was built in 1855. Four 
architects used the materials of seventy demolished 
churches to achieve a triumph of ugliness, devoid 
alike of taste and inspiration. Happily, they did 
not lay under contribution the tiny church — some 
40 feet by 25 — which stands a few paces away, a 
pigmy compared to it in size, but immeasurably 
greater in everything else. It is an exceedingly 
beautiful example of Byzantine at its best, but it 
is not on that account that it claims attention here. 
Its builders, like those of the new cathedral, drew 
their material from older edifices. Its walls con- 
tain fragments Hellenic and Roman, nude figures 
of pagans, an archaic frieze behind the apse, the 
signs of the zodiac in low relief on the lintel, the 
Byzantine eagle, heraldic animals of the Middle 
Ages, and the arms of the Villehardouins, the 
Frankish rulers of the Morea. It is an archi- 
tectural epitome of the history of Athens — the 



ATHENS 



317 



Athens we have been visiting — just within whose 
bounds it stands. 

The modern city does not lend itself easily to 
definition as to character. The writer has known 
it compared to Leamington, which recalls another 
famous comparison based on the presence of a 
river. There are houses at Leamington and there 
are houses at Athens. The alleged resemblance 
to Edinburgh consists only in similarity of geo- 
graphical position. But the Acropolis can hardly 
be likened to Calton Hill, nor Lycabettus to 
Arthur's Seat. And nobody would be bold 
enough to assert that the skies of i ' Auld Reekie " 
are those of Attica, or the tints of the Saronic 
Gulf those of the Firth of Forth. The designers 
of new Athens probably had in their minds a 
South German capital, but there are bits of it 
which remind one of a watering-place on the 
Riviera. In short, Athens is Athens. Its 
characteristics are brightness and whiteness — 
too much of both in summer. Yet one would 
not willingly forego those broad, stately roadways 
and spacious pavements. Dust is the greatest 
scourge — fine, impalpable dust which invades and 
covers every object within doors as well as with- 
out. This has already been much abated by the 
asphalting of the streets, and when that work is 
completed — and it is being pushed forward rapidly 
— it will be reduced to a minimum. Taking all 
things into consideration, life in Athens is plea- 
santer than in Western cities. There is less smoke, 



318 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



less noise, and more space, and, above all, there is 
the " most pellucid air" of Euripides. Even the 
white hot silence of a summer noon is not oppres- 
sive. The nerve-shattering din which is rapidly- 
making London uninhabitable has not invaded 
Athens. The tramways are not noisy. The only 
other public conveyance is a very light and handy 
two-horse bus — a really admirable vehicle. Hap- 
pily, Athens is still Oriental enough not to be in a 
hurry, even when it is at work. No wonder cen- 
tenarians are numerous in Greece. 

Here is the beginning of an Athenian day. The 
profile of Lycabettus is still dark against the kind- 
ling east when there comes the tinkle of bells. 
We know they are borne by goats by the dull, 
muted sound. The timbre of the goat-bell is the 
same everywhere. It is unmistakable, differing 
alike from the fuller tone of the sheep-bell and the 
sharp jingle of the mule-bells. The tinkle is fol- 
lowed by the cry of Gala, galata (milk), and a tall 
figure in fustanella seizes one of his charges by 
the leg and draws from her the morning supply 
for the household of the civil servant opposite. 
The stentorian tones of the goat-herd are quickly 
followed by the shrill treble of Loostro-verneeki 
from the throat of a diminutive shoe-black going 
his round. He has his regular customers, but he 
does not mean to lose a chance one for want of 
advertising, and he has his reward. A couple 
of pair of boots are thrown out, and he unslings 
his box and sets to work on the doorstep. 



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319 



Ephemerides ! The cry is short, sharp, almost 
imperative, like a word of command, and a youth 
with an air of importance comes round the corner 
in a hurry with a sheaf of newspapers wet from 
the press. His command is obeyed. Heads and 
hands are thrust forth and rustling sheets are 
rapidly exchanged for halfpence. The civil ser- 
vant opens his window with a rattle. His eager- 
ness is not unreasonable. The turn of a division 
may throw out the Ministry and him out of his 
place. The whirlwind passage of the newsboy 
is succeeded by a calm. The neighbourhood is 
deep in politics. Presently the silence is broken 
by a long-drawn tremulous note — Agria radeekia — 
from the lips of an old woman bowed beneath 
a hamper of salad herbs — dandelion and other. 
She emphasises the adjective agria — wild, for 
wildings are supposed to possess more virtue than 
garden-grown saladings. She culled them on the 
Hill of the Muses, or perhaps farther afield, at 
dawn. For a penny she will sell enough for a 
family, and it would not be amiss to purchase 
from her, for tramping the hills and stooping is 
hard work at her years, and her earnings are 
scanty. Avga fresca kai limonia — fresh eggs and 
lemons. An unwritten law decrees that the two 
should be sold together ; it does not appear why, 
unless it is because they are conjoined in that 
wholesome and excellent sauce known as avgo- 
limone. The vendor is a woman of another type 
than the poor old herb-gatherer. She makes light 



320 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



of her two baskets as she strides along, a buxom 
Albanian, clad in her white national garb. But 
now the fish is up from Piraeus, and the loud- 
voiced vendors — why should so mute a creature 
as the fish be attended in every land by so much 
noise in the selling? — are shouting Oraia psaria 
fresca — fine fresh fish. They do not pretend it is 
alive like their English congeners. It is carried 
in shallow round wicker trays poised on the head. 
In Lent the cry of psaria is replaced by meethia, 
(mussels), astoko (lobster), and above all soupies 
(a corruption of sepia, the repulsive cuttle-fish so 
prized by the Greeks). The vegetables are carried 
in panniers by donkeys and in carts. In winter 
and early spring, kornopeethia is the most frequent 
cry. The huge cauliflowers come all the way from 
Eleusis, journeying through the night over the 
low pass of Daphne, and along the Sacred Way 
to Athens. In late spring the dominant cry is 
kolokeethakia (young marrows), and anginares 
(globe artichokes), with fresca bisellia (green peas). 
Skortha (garlic) is perennial, and the demand for 
it is so great that it frequently constitutes the only 
item of a donkey-load. Kreetika Cretan is a 
winter cry, which is puzzling at first. It refers 
to Cretan oranges. The vendor avails himself 
of an ellipsis. A little later in the season the 
dominant cry is mespila when the loquat, most 
refreshing of fruit, is abundant. Meanwhile, 
little girls in neat pinafores are tripping to school, 
and the streets are dotted with the figures of 



ATHENS 



321 



young bluejackets. But the frock does not make 
the monk. The Greek Government has ordained 
that all pupils of the Hellenic Schools and Gym- 
nasia shall don the garb. The bluejacket's uniform 
is easy, inexpensive, and a good dress for a school- 
boy. It looks well on the little fellows, especially 
in summer when they are in whites, but on youths 
of seventeen, who are palpably not sailors, it is 
rather absurd. However, it adds to the bright- 
ness of the crowd. 

At noon the church-bells clang inharmoniously. 
The street cries have ceased for some time, but 
now comes a new one, yaoorti, and here is Dimitri 
at the door with that grateful edible. He carries 
his basins of yaoort in a tin case with a glass front. 
He will be round again in the evening, and he 
brought us the milk at six, carrying the pail, for 
he belongs to a cow-dairy, and cows are rarely 
driven through the streets like the goats. So he 
trudges his round three times a day. He was up 
at four and he will finish his work about nine. 
He has no Sundays off. He is twelve. His bare 
black poll sometimes streams with rain, but more 
often it braves a sun which would give a Western 
sunstroke through a straw hat. But Dimitri, with 
his laughing dark eyes and cheeks of the precise 
hue of a fully ripe nectarine, looks well, and he is 
contented with his lot. He has no holidays, 
properly speaking, but in Lent and at fasting 
seasons, when milk is not wanted, he has an easy 
time. On the other hand, Kosta, the bakal's boy 

Y 



322 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



opposite, works all through Lent. He had the after- 
noons of Easter Monday and Christmas Day, and 
that is all he gets throughout the year. His hours 
are from 5 a.m. until 10.30 p.m. — often 11. Every 
morning at 6 Kosta may be seen sweeping the 
pavement in front of the shop. He sweeps the 
roadway as well, and takes a particular pride in it. 
Then he fetches water from the conduit and at half- 
past six takes down the shutters. He is fetching 
and carrying more or less all day. Every few 
minutes a shrill female voice calls bakalt from one 
of the neighbouring houses. The resounding 
name Pantopoleion (General Store) writ large 
over the shop-fronts is ignored by the Athenians, 
and probably by the bakal himself. The Turkish 
word is consecrated by long use. Kosta responds 
to the call, receives the order, and executes it. He 
is square-built and sturdy, fair and grey-eyed, 
taciturn as a Turk. He nods rather than speaks, 
but he never forgets what he is told, and he is 
scrupulously honest. There is never a mistake 
in his change, and if the stranger pays too much 
he calls his attention to the error. He comes from 
Trikala, far north, on the Turkish frontier, and 
there is probably Turkish or Vlach blood in his 
veins, though he would be offended if he were told 
so. He is a Hellene like the rest of them. More- 
over, he has learnt to write Greek and is in great 
request among his Thessalian countrymen who do 
not know grammata — itinerant vendors most of 
them — as a letter-writer. He is fifteen and is saving 



ATHENS 



323 



his scanty earnings in order to go to America, 
that Mecca of the modern Greek. His master 
is a Thessalian too, and so are most of his 
customers. The bakal at the next corner is from 
Eleusis, and the people who frequent his shop are 
peasants from the countryside, less rude and better 
off in the world than the Thessalians. When one 
has sojourned for a time in Athens it is interesting 
to note all these little worlds which make the 
capital a microcosm of Greece. Here in Solon 
Street is a bakal from Eubcea, a smart man of 
business like most of the Eubeans, and driving 
a good trade. Among his boys is a thirteen-year- 
old whose fair skin and blue eyes do not belong to 
Eubcea, but tell of the south. " Where do you 
come from, Jorgo? " "Kranithi." Sure enough, 
he is from Kranidion, on the extreme point of 
the Argolic peninsula. But Sophocles, dark- 
haired and alert, is of another stock, and tells you 
his birthplace is Chalcis. 

A restaurant is sometimes attached to the bakal's 
shop. The bakal does not keep it himself, but lets 
off a portion of his premises, a room or a garden, 
to a cook, who is frequently an islander. In the 
same way, wine-shops are often eating-houses at 
the same time under this system of dual proprietor- 
ship. The vintner supplies the cook's customers 
with wine, and thus sells more than he would 
otherwise. The bakal always combines the calling 
of a tavern-keeper with that of a provision-dealer, 
and his establishment is furnished with chairs and 



324 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



tables, at which professional men and merchants 
do not disdain to sit, though even in democratic 
Athens society sorts itself automatically in these 
establishments. There is one in Stadium Street 
largely frequented by officers, and it is rarely 
entered by workmen or peasants. It is the same 
with the cafes. The Cafe Zacharatos is frequented 
by members of the Chamber, officials and poli- 
ticians, and by people of importance generally, 
together with some who wish to be thought im- 
portant. In the Cafe Byron the visitor finds 
himself in a literary atmosphere with a contingent 
of University students. In the i * Helvetia" the 
University element is dominant. The cafes do 
not sell wine, but they supply spirits. The 
creamery — galaktopoleion — confines itself to milk 
products and confectionery, and is a very popular 
institution with all classes. It serves as a restaurant 
for many, and the number of creameries is on the 
increase. The patisseries are a combination of 
cafe and confectionery. They are the chosen 
resort of the elegant section of Athenian society, 
especially certain establishments in the neighbour- 
hood of Constitution Square. Tea-rooms are, 
however, the dernier cri of the select. Athens eats 
at noon punctually. The clangour of the church 
bells has scarcely died away when the streets are 
full of people hurrying to their midday repast. 
The tramcars are crowded with business men 
going home, and the restaurants grow suddenly 
busy. One cannot go far in any part of Athens 



ATHENS 



325 



without coming across an eating-house. The 
best are in Stadium Street. In the popular 
quarters they abound. Often they occupy cellars 
and are approached by a steep flight of steps from 
the pavement. The Greek easily turns restaura- 
teur. There are many establishments of what 
may be called an amateur character. A group of 
University students will prevail upon a shop- 
keeper to cater for them, and meet at noon and eve 
behind a screen in a corner, and the fare is often 
better in these extemporised dining-rooms than in 
the regular establishments. Their clients always 
belong to the same province, and the city is full 
of these little coteries. It has been computed that 
only about a third of the population is Athenian 
born. In the early years of the nineteenth century, 
according to Finlay, the proportions were the 
same, and of the native third, he says that more 
than half was Albanian. But these conditions 
are by no means new. Tacitus in his day re- 
marked that the old Athenians were extinct, and 
had been replaced by divers races. The modern 
Athenians are therefore a conglomerate, fused 
into a more or less homogeneous whole. It was 
not so in the early years of the new kingdom. In 
the thirties, forties, and fifties the Athenians born 
held aloof from the Phanariots from Constanti- 
nople, whom they called heteroct7iones, they them- 
selves being autocthones. The Phanariots were 
looked upon with a jealous eye and kept out of 
public offices. Then came the wealthy bankers 



326 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



and merchants from the countries in which they 
had enriched themselves. This was the class 
which cultivated relations with the Franks, in 
whose countries they had dwelt and with whose 
manners they were acquainted. They were 
scouted at first by the Athenians, but they are 
now influential. 

They inoculated the sleepy landowners and 
petty traders of the Athens of that day with a 
taste for luxury and display, and also with a mania 
for speculation and risky finance which led to 
speedy disaster, the ill effects of which are still felt. 
But the narrow local patriotism of the native 
Athenians and the Constantinopolitan traditions 
of the more cultured Phanariots needed the 
awakening touch of a new element, and, for 
better or worse, it had to come, inevitably, from 
these Greek representatives of the plutocracy 
which holds so large a place in modern Europe. 
Its forerunners, it is worth noting in this con- 
nection, were the Florentine Acciajuoli who ruled 
Athens in the fourteenth century. The power of 
the financial aristocracy which was destined to 
replace that of the Baron and the Churchman was 
cradled in the palace of the Propylasa. 

Athenian society is not given to gaiety. It has 
been stated in a former chapter that people do not 
"receive" largely. The Court is the quietest in 
Europe. The New Year's Ball is the one function 
in the year. There are two good theatres, which 
are pretty well frequented in winter. Carnival 



ATHENS 



327 



brings with it the usual dances and one great 
masked ball. Concerts at the Odeon and else- 
where always draw a goodly audience. The Par- 
nassos Club is the most active of the social 
centres, and its severer literary side is tempered 
by fetes intimes and musical evenings. But 
Athenians do not care much for indoor gather- 
ings. The stranger soon notices that ladies pay 
more attention to their outdoor toilettes than to 
those of the house. The evening drive to Phaleron 
and the evening promenade to the Zappeion are 
time-honoured institutions, and constitute the 
principal social event of every day. In summer 
there is an exodus from town. Kephisia is still 
a favourite resort, as it was in ancient times. 
Some eight miles from Athens on the road to 
Pentelicus, it is still as Aulus Gallius described 
it in the Noctes Attici y a place of shady groves, 
smooth lawns, and limpid springs whose murmur 
is mingled with the song of birds. It was there, 
whilst the guest of Herodes Atticus, that he in- 
vented the term 4 'classic" as applied to literature. 
It has had a long life. The late M. Syngros, 
that modern Herodes Atticus, had a country- 
house in the neighbourhood, and Kephisia is the 
summer abode of the wealthy, whose villas and 
gardens appear to be the object of greater care 
than their town-houses* That it should always 
have been chosen as a retreat is natural enough. 
It has ample shade and abundance of water, both 
rare in Attica. These advantages, no doubt, 



328 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



determined the choice of Plato, whose villa was 
not far off, between Heraclea, the Bavarian village 
of to-day, and the shrine of Artemis Amarysia, 
the modern Marousa. 

Phaleron has its devotees. Founts and trees it 
cannot boast, but it has the sea, and the bathing 
at Phaleron is unrivalled. It is worth the journey 
to Athens to have that experience. There is no 
shivering in those azure waters or on those sun- 
smitten sands. The Athenians have it at their 
doors. It is a twenty minutes' tram-ride from 
Constitution Square. But they do not take full 
advantage of it. There prevails a singular super- 
stition that it is not good to bathe until melons 
are ripe. That is not until July, so that during 
the latter half of May and the whole of June they 
endure a sun inconceivable in England, but avoid 
the Phaleron beach. This excessive prudence 
would astound an English watering-place, where 
a temperature equal to that of a fine Athenian 
January day is considered inviting for a dip. 

Swimming and gymnastics are the two forms 
of athletics which appeal to the Greeks. Games 
have little attraction for them. The tennis courts 
on the banks of the Ilissus are a fashionable 
rendezvous, but the game is not pursued with 
ardour. The young girls play, but there is a 
lack of lady players. There are golf links, but 
they are used mainly by Western residents. Foot- 
ball, which has gained such a hold all over the 
Continent and elsewhere — I have seen a very good 



ATHENS 



329 



game played in the island of Minorca — has no 
adherents in Greece. Cricket was started in the 
Ionian Islands under the British regime, but it 
has died out. The only memento of our occupa- 
tion, except the roads, is — ginger-beer. The 
Ionians have stuck to that, but they have aban- 
doned the wicket. The prominence given to 
physical culture in the education of the ancient 
Greeks has caused the moderns to make gym- 
nastics compulsory in the schools, and they wisely 
insist on its being treated as one of the most 
important lessons. Athletic clubs have been 
formed in various centres, but there is lacking the 
spirit of sport as we understand it, and athletes 
do not receive much encouragement. 

If the Athenians do not play football or croquet, 
they have learnt how to play bridge. Cards 
occupy an undue portion of time, and although 
gambling does not prevail to anything like the 
extent it does in England, as on the Turf, for 
example, play is an evil in Athenian society. It 
would be very unjust to assume that the whole 
of society is given up to card-playing and trivial 
pursuits. The bulk lead a pure, sane, and affec- 
tionate family life, and a large section find relaxa- 
tion in intellectual work. The Parnassos Society, 
which includes both sexes, expends its energies 
in various directions, and its weekly lectures 
and readings bring together a throng of the best 
social elements in Athens. The Byron Society, 
a younger body — it was founded in 1868 — circu- 



330 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



lates books throughout the country. English 
people ought to feel a sympathy for it, since it 
subscribed for and set up a statue of Byron at 
Mesolonghi in 1881, and instituted a festival in 
his honour. The Society for the Propagation of 
Hellenic Literature was founded in 1869. It must 
be remembered that these are not Academic 
bodies, but purely social and popular. 

Athenian ladies have been accused of indiffer- 
ence to the lot of their poorer sisters, of possess- 
ing no initiative, of putting forth no effort towards 
social amelioration, and generally as wanting in 
ideals. But how does this stand in the face of 
the following facts ? 

The Union of Greek Women, which is well 
housed in Academy Street, is varied in its activi- 
ties. It provides a shelter for aged domestic 
servants, and undertakes the care of the sick poor 
in their own homes — a work of charity that is 
made educative, for people are invited to attend 
lectures on the proper treatment of the sick. The 
Union lays special stress on the prevention of 
consumption, which is all too rife in Athens, and 
carelessness is the chief contributory cause. A 
Seminary for Women Teachers and an Industrial 
School for Girls are established at the head- 
quarters of the Union, which owes its existence to 
Madame Parren, the well-known writer. Another 
institution, known colloquially to Athenians as the 
" Poor Girls," is a technical school and workshop 
for destitute women and children, who are taught 



ATHENS 



331 



to comb, card, and spin wool, to embroider, 
and to make lace and carpets. The Home of 
St. Catharine provides board and lodging at the 
rate of 30 drachmas (about 24s.) a month for girls 
employed in shops, girl students, and others in 
Athens who are separated from their families. 
Not only does this excellent institution provide for 
the material wants of its proteges, but opportuni- 
ties are afforded them of improving their education 
by means of evening classes, lectures are given 
on the hygiene of the home and person, and the 
girls are encouraged to develop habits of self- 
reliance and independence, and the dignity of 
womanhood is instilled into them as a principle of 
life and conduct. 

The Orphanage for Boys is one of the oldest 
charities in Athens. Its inmates wear a neat 
uniform, and have an excellent military band 
which plays them through the streets when they 
set off on their periodical country walks. They 
are all taught a trade. The Orphanage for Girls 
with its hospital was founded by Queen Amalia, 
and the present Queen is its patron. The girls 
receive an education in which housekeeping is 
made an important element. They are eagerly 
sought for as servants, but in some cases they 
marry on leaving the Orphanage, and as no 
Greek, however humble his position, will take a 
wife without receiving money with her, marriage 
portions are provided from a special fund. Chief, 
among the hospitals is the great Evangelismos, 



332 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



situated in a healthy, open spot on the farther slope 
of Lycabettus. It is well equipped and well 
staffed, and visited periodically by the most 
eminent practitioners in Athens. It is managed 
by a committee of ladies presided over by Queen 
Olga, who takes an intimate personal interest in 
its welfare. The nursing staff is managed by a 
Danish lady. It is not an easy matter to obtain 
nurses. The Greeks consider nursing as a pro- 
fession beneath their dignity, although when 
trained they are quick and capable. Nevertheless, 
nothing will induce them to appear in public in 
uniform. The Children's Hospital outside Athens, 
at Goudi, is a model establishment. It is due to 
the initiative of the Crown Princess Sophia, who 
has made it an object of constant personal care 
and supervision. The Home for Incurables is 
managed by a committee of twenty ladies. The 
Institution for the Blind, a handsome building in 
the Byzantine style, is in University Street. A 
most useful charity is the Soup Kitchen, built by 
the Princess Sophia. It supplies wholesome, 
well-cooked repasts for ten and twenty leptas — a 
penny and twopence — and is a real boon to the 
necessitous in a city where food is exceedingly 
dear, and in the lower class of eating-houses often 
of dubious quality, and prepared under dirty and 
insanitary conditions. The Royal Hellenic School 
of Needlework, founded by Lady Egerton, the 
wife of a former British Minister, has become in a 
great measure self-supporting. The making of 



ATHENS 



333 



exquisite lace and embroidery, for which Greece 
was formerly famous, was becoming a lost art, 
and it was the aim of the foundress to revive it, at 
the same time creating an industry which would 
benefit the women of Greece. It has several 
branches, and the women and girls have proved 
enthusiastic pupils and produce most beautiful 
work. The designing is done mainly at Athens, 
and some of the branches have specialities. The 
island of ^Egina reproduces old Greek point, and 
Crete makes lace of distinctive Cretan type. 
Corinth is engaged on white embroidery on linen, 
a very beautiful class of work. Korope, a village 
behind Hymettus, is busied with coloured em- 
broidery of Albanian pattern. The island of 
Kephallenia turns out needlework of a special 
Ionian character. Athens has devoted itself to 
the reproduction of old designs, Greek, Frankish- 
Greek, and Byzantine, and has even gone to the 
remote Mycenasan Age. Some of the work is of 
a very intricate nature and demands great skill. 
It is all beautiful and distinctive. 

In a land where politics claim so much attention 
one might expect to find ladies' political associa- 
tions, but there are none, and the feminine vote is 
as yet below the horizon. But that Greek ladies 
are capable of united philanthropic effort, are not 
unmindful of the welfare of their sex, and are 
striving to improve its condition, is amply proved 
by what precedes. A Greek mother, asked as to 
the number of her children, used to reply, "Two 



334 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



boys and — I beg your pardon — three girls." The 
deprecatory parenthesis is no longer considered 
necessary. Girls need no apology for having 
come into the world. It is thought worth while 
to educate them, and if they will they may take 
their place beside their brothers in the lecture- 
rooms of the University. There are girl gradu- 
ates in philosophy, and lady doctors who have 
taken their degrees at Athens or in Paris. To 
appreciate the significance of this, we must re- 
member that when Greece recovered her freedom 
the woman who could read and write was a phe- 
nomenon. Travellers of sixty or seventy years 
ago tell of their surprise at finding well-dressed, 
well-mannered ladies of the richer class destitute 
of these elementary accomplishments. 

In those days their only recreation seems to 
have been the bath. It is not so now ; but a spice 
of Orientalism lingers in the baths, rendered aro- 
matic and stimulating by a cunning decoction of 
which some of the ingredients are rosemary and 
leaves of the walnut and lemon tree. 

The Athenian ladies have been reproached for 
their short, ungraceful figures, their lack of charm, 
and the plainness of their features, redeemed only 
by their eyes. A short sojourn in Athens would 
suffice to disprove this. The Athenians are rarely 
tall, but their figures are often elegant, and with- 
out any pretensions to extraordinary beauty they 
possess distinction. They certainly need more 
exercise ; but that is provided for the younger 



ATHENS 



335 



generation. It is noticeable that there is a grow- 
ing tendency towards greater stature and a better- 
developed physique in the Athenian schoolgirl of 
to-day. Whether this is the effect of tennis and 
gymnastics or not, it is patent to all who care to 
observe. The Athenian falls short, not in her 
face and figure, but in her voice. She inherits a 
beautiful and expressive language, but she fails 
to do justice to it. The shrill, strident intonation 
and sharp, hurried utterance detract from the 
dignity of a personality otherwise charming, and 
speech brings with it a sense of disappointment. 

Undeniably intelligent, quick in her sympathies, 
and displaying in her conversation a wide range 
of knowledge, there is something that we invari- 
ably miss in the Greek, and sooner or later we 
discover it to be an insensibility to beauty of the 
higher kind. She will sit and gossip with her 
back turned to a fine sunset, and can rarely dis- 
criminate between the vulgar and trivial and the 
good and true in art. Notwithstanding, the 
Athenian lady is the foremost among the women 
of the Near East. She stands on another level. 
Of her, and no less of the whole nation, it may 
be said there is a wide gulf between the present 
and the epoch of Independence. If we consider 
what Greece was in a past not yet distant, and 
compare her with what she is now, we must admit 
that her progress has been little short of miracu- 
lous. Take one detail alone. When King Otho 
came to Athens in 1832 there was not a single 



336 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



road practicable for wheeled traffic in the country. 
In 1906 there were 845 miles of railway, 4883 
miles of telegraphs, and 436 miles of telephone. 
Post offices did not exist when Athens became 
once more Greek. Now there are between 700 
and 800. And the moral progress has been not a 
whit behind the material. Athens has the aspect, 
the administrative and social machinery, and the 
embellishments of any other European capital, 
and we take it for granted. But when we see 
the troops of children thronging the streets on 
their way to or from school, we forget the centuries 
when Greece was subjected to the infamous tribute 
of children, which tore boys from their parents and 
their faith to swell the ranks of the Sultan's janis- 
saries. When, on the Acropolis, we admire the 
grace and strength of the Caryatides, we are apt 
to overlook the time, not so very long ago, when 
the Erectheion was the harem of the Disdar-Agha. 
It is hard to withhold admiration from a people 
who won their way through this, stubbornly pre- 
serving their nationality. For the Greeks were 
never blotted out as were the Bulgarians for a 
period. 

Want of balance has always marked opinions 
upon Greece. They have erred either on the side 
of unqualified praise or of wholesale condemna- 
tion. This was the case during the struggle for 
independence. That Greece still lived came as a 
revelation to the West. People were dazzled by 
the wonder of it, and carried away by enthu- 



ATHENS 



337 



siasm, dreamed of a revival of the greatness of 
the past. Others based their judgment on their 
experience of a handful of Levantine traders, 
assigning to the whole nation the qualities of the 
latter. It needed the common-sense of a poet to 
take a saner view. Byron wrote in 1824: "The 
former state of the Greeks can have no more effect 
on their present lot than the existence of the Incas 
on the future fortunes of Peru. Instead of con- 
sidering what they have been or speculating on 
what they may be, let us look at them as they 
are. . . . Allowance must be made for them by 
all reasonable people." The poet rightly insisted 
that time was needed for them to show what stuff 
they were made of, "when the limbs of the Greeks 
are a little less stiff from the shackles of four cen- 
turies." 

A comparison between the Greeks of then and 
now, if it does not justify the wild visions that 
were entertained by the Philhellenes of those days, 
must lead any unprejudiced mind to the conclu- 
sion that they have made enormous strides. Yet 
judgment is apt to be less indulgent than it was. 
One reason is, perhaps, that people do not know 
their classics so well nowadays. Those who 
specialise in them know them better ; but classical 
learning is not so generally diffused. When Lord 
Cochrane took command of the Greek fleet he 
advised the Provisional Government at Nauplia 
to read the First Philippic of Demosthenes. How 
many naval officers of the present generation are 



338 HOME LIFE IN HELLAS 



familiar with the Attic orator ? The exigencies of 
their profession leave them little time for aught 
else. And education generally has followed other 
and broader lines than when the classics were its 
bed-rock. But Greece can never have quite the 
same meaning to those who are unacquainted 
with her literature, Yet she is more deserving 
now of sympathy than in the days when it was so 
largely given to her. Finlay tells how through 
the stern-windows of Cochrane's cabin he saw the 
Hydriote brigs sail out of harbour because the 
demand for two months' pay in advance had not 
been acceded to. Such a thing would be im- 
possible now. The nation has left its childhood 
behind. 



WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. 
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH 



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